


the shadows among the stars

by qqueenofhades



Series: All Souls [2]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Elizabethan, F/M, Fake Marriage, Family Shenanigans, Garcia Flynn Human Disaster, Mutual Pining, Time Travel, Tudor Era, We All Hope For Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-02-09 21:31:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 314,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18646489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qqueenofhades/pseuds/qqueenofhades
Summary: Sequel to the alchemical wedding. Garcia Flynn and Lucy Preston have timewalked to 1590 London, in search of answers about the mysterious manuscript Ashmole 782. But as they tangle with alchemists, assassins, witches, vampires, daemons, queens, and emperors – and the de Clermont family themselves – they quickly realize that their quest will be far more difficult than they ever imagined, and their relationship will be challenged as never before. In the present, their formidable enemy Michael Temple is more powerful than ever, the rival creature factions on the Congregation scheme and intrigue against each other, and in both centuries, the danger and the shadows are only deepening.





	1. The Meridian

The first thing that Lucy knows is mud. It is all around her, soaking into her shoes and skirts, smelling of a rich, sinus-scorching reek of compost, wet earth, raw sewage, night-soil, shore wrack, and fresh-turned turf. It is such an overwhelming sensory experience that nothing else seems to switch immediately back online, as she’s only aware of indistinct dark shapes moving in a formless void and a dim rushing sound like far-away waves. She is more or less certain that she is in possession of a body in the correct configuration, and she is even standing up, managing to have landed on her feet instead of her face, which is good given the aforesaid mud. She is sinking in it up to her ankles, she really did not want an inadvertent spa treatment, and even without the benefit of sight, she knows that this has to be it. Nowhere in the modern world, or at least the first world, smells like this.

With that, as her very first act in the past, Lucy takes a few staggering sideways steps and retches. She can’t see what she’s spitting into, she hopes it isn’t anything valuable, and her innards are still in considerable turmoil even after the initial spasm subsides. She blinks very hard, discovers that her eyes are in fact open, and the reason she can’t see anything is because it’s dark and there is absolutely no artificial lighting. She lifts her hand in front of her face, can just make out the outlines of her fingers, retches one more time, and remains hunched over, breathing hard. Then it strikes her that she hasn’t heard anyone else yet, and she panics. “Garcia? Garcia!”

Her voice comes out raw and scraped as if she’s been shouting for hours. Apparently the full works, the formal and permanent translocation through time rather than a five-second drive-by, really messes you up, which is not altogether surprising. She doesn’t feel up to standing, and the next second, she senses someone next to her, bending over her anxiously. As a vampire, Flynn has apparently avoided the worst indignities of the trip, though he too sounds as if he could use a minute. His hand touches her back. “Lucy? Hey. Lucy?”

She nods, teeth gritted, though with the assurance that he is here with her and they are together and – for the moment – safe, the biggest knot in her gut starts to subside. As her dazed vision finally starts to work again, her optic nerves adjusting only reluctantly to their temporo-spatial relocation, she can make out his face, pale and worried as he kneels next to her. Neither of them need to ask if they made it, but there obviously is not a smartphone to whip out to check the date, or any other way to immediately know when they’ve landed. Rufus said it could be anywhere from March to May 1590, and if they have arrived before March 25, Lady Day and the official start of the New Year in England, it could technically still be 1589. Did he account for that in his calculations? Have they somehow managed to miss their destination by a year – and Flynn said that plague hit London in 1589, that would be a _very_ bad mistake to make, and Lucy still isn’t sure if she can timewalk them properly again without the benefit of the doorway, the aligned stars that got them here in the first –

“Hey,” Flynn says again, clearly able to tell that she’s already starting to freak out. “One thing at a time, huh? You got us here, that’s the main thing. Can you stand?”

Lucy isn’t sure, to be honest, but he slips his hand beneath her elbow and assists her, wobbly-legged as a newborn calf, to her feet. They still aren’t sure about this either, but she clings to Flynn until they feel somewhat like resuming the profitable working relationship of the last thirty-four years. She blinks again, chasing the last frenzied purple spots out of her vision. “Can you tell what time it is? Or even where we are?”

Flynn checks the sky. “Early morning. No more than an hour until dawn. And it’s warm, which means we landed later in spring, rather than earlier. The sun will be up by five o’clock. As for where, the coordinates were for Greenwich, so we have to be somewhere around there. In which case, we should probably move. Queen Elizabeth spends summers at the Palace of Placentia, her favorite residence, and we don’t want to be caught lurking like grubby vagabonds at unsociable hours.”

Lucy can’t argue with that logic, and they hurry across the rough, rolling ground. It gets lighter as they walk, and she sees that they seem to have landed in a deer park or long green lawn, planted with tall oaks in verdant leaf. As they emerge into a clearing and gaze down the hill, she can just make out what she does in fact recognize as Greenwich, though it looks nothing like her last visit on the August bank holiday. There is no Old Royal Naval College, no Greenwich Observatory, no _Cutty Sark,_ no crowds of tourists in the park, and nothing but an eerie, grey-dawn quiet, thin bands of morning mist drifting among the trees. On the spot where the Naval College should sit, there is instead a large and stately stone palace. A banner streams from the parapets: a flag blazoned with three golden lions on red, in the second and third quarters, and three golden fleur-de-lys on blue, in the first and fourth. Lucy does not work on heraldry and therefore is sure that this is not the fancy terminologically correct way to say it (English genealogists everywhere are clutching their pearls), but it is the coat of arms of the Tudor monarchs, and the flag being raised symbolizes, as it does in the present, that the queen is in residence. As she and Flynn give the palace a careful berth, making their way down toward the river, Lucy asks, “Does Elizabeth know you? By sight, that is?”

“She does, yes.” Flynn glances up at the dark bulwark of the palace, as if the queen might be peering out a window, watching them pass. “I had to present myself at court when I first arrived in London. After all, I am French, and that is a suspicious thing to be. But I helped in the defeat of the Armada in ‘88 – ” he drops this piece of information completely casually, because that is just what he does – “and that removed most of the questions around my loyalty. She knighted me and gave me a courtesy title in gratitude, so it’s properly Sir Garcia Clairmont, Baron Clairmont.”

“You said it was Lord Garcia Clairmont back at Denise and Michelle’s.” Lucy is already getting the feeling that Flynn might not have explained everything very clearly, and titles, to say the least, need to be correct around here. “So what exactly do we call – ”

“It is,” Flynn says. “A social peer or superior would address me as _Sir Garcia,_ but a social inferior would address me as _Lord Clairmont._ As a baron, I’m relatively low in the pecking order. Royalty, dukes – or rather duke, there’s only one, Norfolk – marquesses, earls, and viscounts all rank above me, but all the minor nobility and gentry and ordinary people rank below. We went through this, remember? As my wife, you share my rank, so those higher on the ladder call you _Lady Lucy,_ but those for those below, it’s _Lady Clairmont._ Got it?”

“Yes, I remember.” Flynn drilled her extensively on this, but Lucy is already having the vaguely panicky feeling that she is going to blank, call some haughty and important such-and-such by an inadvertently demeaning title, and cause a diplomatic incident. “You don’t address landed nobles by their last name, but by their landholding, right?”

“Yes.” Flynn glances around for early-morning traffic, of which there is already starting to be some. It’s not yet five o’clock, but servants are waking up across the city, and will soon be out on their daily errands. “So if you met Margaret Douglas, the countess of Lennox, you’d call her _Lady Lennox,_ not _Lady Douglas,_ and definitely not _Countess Douglas_ or even just _Countess._ You won’t, because she died in 1578, but that’s it. Simple.”

Lucy makes a noise in her throat, as she suspects that their definitions of “simple” are far from the same thing. She’s a historian, she is used to remembering a lot of nitpicky detail, but the stakes aren’t usually so high. If she makes a mistake, she can just go back and edit the Word document later, or erase a reference and replace it with a new one. This is more like being an actress, expected to open the play without having more than a few days to cram-learn her lines, and she speeds up to keep up with Flynn, who is striding along at a brisk pace and whose legs are twice as long as hers. “Slow down, would you?”

He glances down at her, slightly abashed, and consents to stop trying to win the Elizabethan Power-Walking Competition. It is almost light by now, a pink glow lining the eastern horizon, and Lucy still has not stopped moving long enough to properly get her bearings. She suspects that Lord and Lady Clairmont would not be caught dead mucking around on foot at the ass-crack of dawn outside the city, and wonders if they’ll have to be Master and Mistress Flynn until they can move into his house on the Strand. That requires getting his past self to move out of it _tout suite,_ and Flynn has promised to send a letter dispatching himself on a wild-goose chase to Dalmatia, on the pretense that the Raven King’s famous lost library has been found. That, however, will still take at least a few days, and Lucy once again feels the strictures of their six-month deadline, if they want to return in time to save Flynn’s brother, Gabriel. He was poisoned by manticore venom twice, stabbed, nearly died, and thanks to a desperate bargain that Lucy made with the witch goddess Diana, will be maintained in an enchanted sleep for six months. One of the chief things they have to do here is find an antidote for an extremely rare and dangerous poison, bring it back, and transport it to where Gabriel is stashed in some secret Liechtenstein castle under the care of the Knights of Lazarus, all before six months are up. _And_ there’s everything they need to discover about Ashmole 782, Amelie Wallis, and the School of Night. They have a lot to get done and not much time to do it in, and if Past Flynn is inclined to hold them up with stubbornness and suspicion (Lucy knows the present one, it is an all-too-valid possibility) then she is also going to conk him over the head and put him into an enchanted snooze.

The sun comes fully up as they walk, and Lucy gets her first proper look at Tudor London. The smell off the Thames is eye-watering, as all the city’s waste, human and animal, industrial effluent, rubbish (and very often, dead bodies) are dumped into it, and she tries to breathe through her mouth as much as possible. The road they’re following west into the city isn’t much more than a narrow, rutted cart track, with more of the ferocious mud that practically sucks Lucy’s shoes off with every step. None of the iconic features of the modern skyline are present: no Shard, no Gherkin, no Big Ben, no London Eye, no domed St. Paul’s, no Tower Bridge, indeed none of the bridges except for one. London Bridge is the only way between the city and Southwark, and it is a crammed commercial thoroughfare built with shops and houses four stories high, narrow and teetering, to the point where you might not be surprised if it _did_ fall down. It’s often blocked with slow-moving herds of animals being driven to the flesh markets at Smithfield, and that, combined with the narrow, labyrinthine, pitch-dark lanes that wind among the shops, houses, taverns, churches, guildhalls, graveyards, markets, and stalls, means that despite its filth and stink, the Thames is London’s principal highway. Throngs of small craft are already out: ferrymen shouting “Eastward-ho!” or “Westward-ho!” to indicate to passengers which way they’re headed, barges hauling goods, small ketches heading to the estuary for the day’s fishing, and here and there the gilded, canopied pleasure crafts used to transport some exclusive personage in comfort. Lucy definitely thinks it’s some kind of public holiday. Most of the people out don’t seem to be working, and there is an air of enjoyment and frivolity, flowers and food and drink and general gay good cheer. Then they pass a pole being erected in a small square, draped with wreathes, and she looks at Flynn. “May Day?”

“Seems like it,” Flynn says. “That would make sense. We came through on Beltane, the fire festival. And six months from now, the date of our return, would be November first. All Souls.”

A chill goes through Lucy at the thought. Not least because this suggests that the only time they _can_ go through will be on All Souls, and that even if they do happily get everything done ahead of time (a problem she would like to have, however doubtful it seems) the gate won’t be open for a proper return until the very last day. That will give them just hours to get to Liechtenstein and save Gabriel before the goddess’ deadline expires, and that, obviously, will be a close-run thing indeed. Maybe Lucy can timewalk them directly to the castle, though the Knights of Lazarus were clearly suspicious about letting her, a witch, know the location. She tries to push that out of her head, and again has to jog to keep up with Flynn, who has quickly forgotten that he, used to gamboling around as a merry bachelor, now has a small human wife to account for. She grabs his sleeve. “Quit _running.”_

“Sorry.” Flynn once more moderates his pace, though there’s no telling how long this will last. “You don’t usually stroll here, and I don’t have a sword. That’s not a bad thing, since it means I can’t be challenged to a duel, but I don’t like being this exposed.”

“Can’t be challenged to a d – ?” Lucy does remember Flynn saying something about how Elizabethan noblemen are a quarrelsome lot, walk around (if they walk at all, as anyone who can afford to do so rides) with rapiers and daggers as a prominent part of their apparel, and anyone who is wearing a weapon can be challenged on the spot to redress an affront, real or imagined. Most duels peter out with nothing more than a few ribald insults exchanged between the noblemen and their retinues (think the “do you bite your thumb at me, sir?” scene from _Romeo and Juliet_ ) and as a vampire, Flynn can’t be killed by human weapons, but it would get them into trouble with the authorities and more attention than they need. He’s already going to cause a shock by appearing with a sudden wife who is clearly Not From Around Here, and gossip spreads fast.

They are almost into the city by now, on the Southwark side, and Lucy is starting to get rather hot, thirsty, and tired of walking. Across the river, she spots the majestic Gothic silhouette of Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, which once had the highest spire in England, higher even than Salisbury, until it was destroyed in a lightning strike in 1561. This and the Tower of London, walls grey with grit and smoke and gunpowder, a working and feared fortress, form the principal recognizable bastions on the northern shore. A sea of crooked rooftops spreads between, mostly tiled; thatch is forbidden within city limits in fear of fire. The Great Fire doesn’t hit until the ominously appropriate 1666, but smaller-scale blazes are a constant threat, and in these close, wood-and-wattle quarters, even an unattended kitchen fire can quickly get out of hand. Lucy won’t be doing her own cooking, so at least she can check “inadvertently burning down London” off the long list of things she’s worried about. As long as she remembers to snuff her candles and not hang anything over braziers.

“Garcia,” she says, nudging at his arm. “How much further are we going?”

“Not too much further.” Flynn looks down at her, belatedly recognizing that while he is impervious to the exertion, she would like to sit down soon, thanks. “There’s a few inns around here, though just to warn you, some of them are also brothels. We won’t stay in one of those, but Bankside is a popular leisure district, and that means all kinds.”

As they wind through the May Day crowds, the people taking full advantage of the holiday – they work Monday through Saturday and go to church on Sunday morning, they only get one free afternoon a week – Lucy hopes that nobody is going to spot Lord Clairmont knocking around in this off-color neighborhood. Maybe that’s why they’re here, in hopes of lying low among the common folk. Bankside is crammed with taverns, brothels, gambling dens, theatres – the famous Globe isn’t built yet, but The Theatre, The Curtain, and The Rose are all in operation – and one of the chief attractions, the bear and bull-baiting pits, as well as the cockfighting rings. They pass one of these, where a pair of shrieking roosters are tearing the feathers off each other and the crowd is going wild to place bets, silver pennies trading hands as fast as a blackjack table in Vegas, and Lucy winces. She’s aware that bloodsports are big around here, even if there is obviously a modern woman inside her protesting about animal cruelty, and hopes that they do not have to spend much time around it. Trying not to sound like a small child on a road trip, but starting to be overwhelmed with the heat and crowds and noise and stench and sheer, unrelenting unfamiliarity, she says, “Garcia, are we almost – ”

“Here.” He comes to a halt in front of a swinging wooden sign – businesses don’t usually have names, even though literacy is increasingly common among ordinary people, but are designated by their painted devices. This one has a swan and frog, and a door stands open into the street, beckoning customers into a cool dark taproom. “We’ll go in here.”

Lucy hopes that this means he managed to get his hands on some Elizabethan money before they left, and follows him in with relief. Flynn has to duck precipitately beneath the low lintel, and still can’t straighten up to his full height inside. Since it’s a holiday, the premises are full with both men and women, though none of the women are unaccompanied. A man is polishing the counter with a grimy rag, several casks of assorted wines and ales sit behind him, and several sturdy-looking barmaids in aprons are carrying drinks to the customers. Upon sight of them, he straightens up. “God ye good day, goodman, goodwife. Wilt thou have the Rhenish, tuppence a dram? Fine spirit for the Maying.”

His accent is strong, not the standard British RP that Lucy is used to, and he pronounces vowels more like Middle English than modern ones, but she is deeply relieved that she can, with effort, understand him. She does not feel up to speaking in public, a married woman would almost surely expect her husband to do it for her anyway, and Flynn shakes his head. “Nay, not the Rhenish. Two tankards of ale, prithee.”

The barman shrugs, draws them two tankards from the cask, and Lucy is about to ask if they should be drinking alcohol in the heat before she remembers that nobody drinks water. The Thames is too polluted, there are a few private wells and fountains in richer homes, but for the most part, even children drink beer, albeit not at full strength. Flynn hands over a silver penny, then says, “Hast thou a room to let a night or twain? My wife and I are just come from Canterbury, and are without our own lodging in the city yet.”

“Aye, that could be managed.” The barman eyes them interestedly, sizing up their clothes and trappings, judging how much they can afford to pay. “Twelve pence and a groat from six o’ the clock tonight to seven o’ the clock tomorrow, and sixpence for supper in the commons, or an extra shilling for it to have in privy, the tariff the same for each night. Dost thou think it fair?”

Flynn snorts, apparently considering this in fact to be highway robbery, and they spend several minutes bartering each other down to a more reasonable figure. To Lucy’s ears, the “thee”-s and “thou”-s and other King James Bible-esque English sounds stilted, performative and quaint, but this is in fact the most casual register of speech: like other Romance languages, English used to have a formal and informal version of “you,” and indeed “you” is the former, the one you use to your superiors, officials, and anyone higher in rank. In daily conversation among your friends, neighbors, and family, it’s “thou,” and since they’re trying not to draw attention or put on airs, they will speak like commoners. Listening to Flynn talk, the way he easily rattles it off, is extremely attractive, but then, she has always known he is good with languages. At least one of them doesn’t feel completely boggled here. She isn’t sure that it will ever be her.

As Flynn and the barman argue, Lucy sips her ale and tries to catch her breath. It’s not an ice-cold Budweiser, but at least it’s cool and wet and somewhat refreshing. It has a fermented-honey taste like mead, she would have gone for something a little more bitter, and while it’s watered down, it’s still strong enough that she, having already thrown up her breakfast this morning, decides to take it slow. She looks at the other patrons, all of whom appear to be enjoying their holiday and are chatting amiably. Nobody is paying them too much attention, at least, even though their clothes are old-fashioned, dirty, and look somewhat cheap. Lucy is also wearing hiking boots underneath her skirt, which definitely are not period-appropriate, but given their trek, she’s glad she did, and nobody will be looking at her feet too closely anyway. At least so she thinks, but there is a boy who offers to pull travelers’ boots off for a penny, and whenever they come back here for the night, she will just have to avoid him.

At last, Flynn and the barman agree on a more reasonable tariff for a few nights, Flynn pays him (since otherwise the man could just rent the room to someone else willing to fork over upfront, and they don’t want to get back and find that they have no place to stay before dark) and takes a long drink of his own ale. Under her breath, Lucy mutters, “How much money do we have?”

“Cecilia brought some with the vaccinations,” Flynn says. “Four crowns, seven shillings, and a handful of sixpence, groats, and pennies. That should be more than enough to support us while we’re waiting for me to leave London – crowns are worth five shillings each, we have four of those, and twenty shillings make a pound, which can be almost half of what a low-ranking servant earns in a year. You remember the equivalences, don’t you?”

“Mostly.” Lucy remembers the rule of thumb that twelve pence make a shilling, twenty shillings make a pound, and that most daily transactions are carried out in pence, but she is once more grateful that Flynn will be expected to handle all financial business anyway. “Should you send the letter to yourself today?”

“Tomorrow.” Flynn takes another sip. “It’s May Day, the streets are crowded, I wouldn’t be going anywhere even if I did get the message now. Today’s Friday, though, and tomorrow is Saturday, I can’t leave on a Sunday, and will need a few days to prepare anyway. Hopefully we can move in by the end of next week.”

“Right.” The idea of lurking around here and waiting for his past self to leave town is still so weird that Lucy tries not to think about it directly. “So what do we do for a week? Just… take in the sights? We can’t really afford to waste time.”

“I know.” Flynn’s long fingers drum distractedly on the scarred wood of the bar. “We’ll have a look at the Ashmole page and see if I recognize any of the names. But I’ll have to be careful where I go in public. The entire population of the city is just under two hundred thousand people, and in neighborhood parishes, everyone knows everyone. I don’t want to have too many conflicting sightings, especially if my past self is out buying supplies too.”

“What – ” Lucy has watched enough time-travel shows to know that the answer can’t be anything good, but she still has to ask. “What happens if you meet yourself?”

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t see me.” Flynn shrugs, which isn’t very reassuring. “Well, finish your ale and we’ll go back out. We don’t get our room until six o’clock anyway.”

Lucy has plenty of things she could say to this, but it’s better not to. She takes a few more sips, decides that’s about all the booze she should have for now, and gets to her feet, weaving through the crowded taproom after Flynn, who clears a broad swath for her to follow. Whenever he’s standing up, heads turn. They emerge back into the heat and brightness of the day, and Flynn looks around with a considering expression. “Are you hungry?”

Lucy could stand to eat something, especially since she just drank, and he makes his way to a hot-pie stand and buys her a pasty. It’s fresh out of the oven, golden-brown and glistening and greasy, stuffed with meat, chopped onions, leeks, and carrots, and seasoned with an array of spices. By now, it’s early afternoon, and the May Day celebrations are in full flow. It does remind Lucy a little of any other crowded, boozy summer bank holiday, people spilling out of pubs and sitting in the sun, dancing and drinking, playing football and bowls. A group of apprentices are bashing each other with cudgels nearby, but that appears to be in more or less good fun. They deserve to let off steam. To become a tradesman in London, you have to serve at least seven years as an apprentice under a master who’s a member of the appropriate guild; there’s one for every industry, and they strictly control all commerce and revenue. In other words, you cannot simply move to London from the countryside and set up shop, and the apprentice’s life is practically similar to a novice monk’s: he is forbidden to fornicate, marry, gamble, drink, or otherwise disport himself the way a young man would be inclined. His master may or may not pay him, being required only to provide food and lodging, and he is also at liberty to beat him if he is lazy, untrustworthy, stupid, or otherwise unsatisfactory. Apprentices are also the first line of defense if a shop is broken into, hence the cudgels, and they sometimes get to run around and cause all the mayhem they want, such as on Shrove Tuesday, chasing the evil out of the city before the start of Lent. If at the end of it, they have served their time and learned their craft, they can operate their own premises and take apprentices in turn. But it’s a tough row to hoe, and many of them quit beforehand.

Lucy moves closer to Flynn, taking his arm, because she doesn’t want to run any risk of being separated from him in this maze. Once they pass the dueling apprentices, they’re coming up on the Rose Theatre, and a man on a box is standing outside the door, yelling at passersby at the top of his lungs. “Come ye, come ye! Come ye to the tale of _Tamburlaine the Great,_ played by Pembroke’s Men! Two bits the floor, four bits the gallery! _Tamburlaine the Great,_ by Kit Marlowe!”

 _“Tamburlaine?”_ Lucy stops short, recognizing the name – and, of course, the playwright. It’s one of Marlowe’s earliest dramas, one of the first major box-office hits of the Elizabethan theatre, and she looks around in sudden expectation that a literary legend might walk past her. She can’t resist the urge, and glances at Flynn. “Can we go?”

He pauses, then shrugs in acquiescence, striding up to the shouting man and handing over two groats for gallery seats, where the slightly more well-to-do sit above the commoners who stand at stage level. They then join the crowd shuffling inside; all plays are matinees, since there is no indoor lighting aside from candles, and the theatre roof is open-air. They climb the dark, creaky stairs up to the gallery and try to find somewhere to sit on the wooden benches. It’s packed cheek by jowl, and enterprising vendors wearing trays around their necks are flogging snacks to hungry theatregoers: oysters, cherries, plums, peaches, walnuts, hazelnuts, and for the epicureans, legs of fresh crab. All of this can also be thrown at the players if they’re doing badly, until Lucy wonders if this is the origin of the term “peanut gallery.” It’s  a good thing that they’re passing as commoners, since there aren’t any noblewomen to be seen, and she can’t help a brief excitement. She’s actually _here._

The theatre fills up steadily (some of the players are physically stuffing people through the doors until the floor is filled – modern safety regulations, they be not known here) and finally, a dark-eyed young man in a modish black-and-gold doublet strides on stage. Lucy has an inkling who is, but when he introduces himself as the playwright, Kit Marlowe, she can’t help a small shocked breath. Flynn glances down with an amused expression. “I didn’t know you were such a fan of late Tudor tragedians.”

“It’s Christopher Marlowe,” Lucy says, slightly crossly. “Of course I’m impressed.”

“I can introduce you after the play,” Flynn offers. “I know Marlowe, we’re colleagues from the School. And I don’t know if you can tell from here, but he’s a daemon.”

That catches Lucy short. She stares at Marlowe, able – now that Flynn has mentioned it – to see the magical aura that thrums around him, identifying him as a fellow creature. He does fit the bill for a daemon: the unstable, creative, independent, and occasionally tempestuous personality, live fast and die young, the flouting of social norms and the whispers of homosexuality, atheism, and other crimes against public morality. She’s about to accept, then frowns. “Would Marlowe be expecting to see his friend Master Flynn here tonight? With a wife he’s never heard of, no less?”

“Ah.” Flynn, once again, has managed to forget that they are supposed to be married. It might almost be insulting, but Lucy knows (or hopes, at any rate) it’s just because he’s so focused on the mission. “Hmm. I’m not sure.”

Lucy muffles a sigh, wonders if anyone is going to be remotely fooled by this, and settles in to watch. She then gets another slight shock when Marlowe announces that the role of Tamburlaine will be played today by Ned Alleyn. Edward Alleyn, along with Richard Burbage, is one of the most famous actors of the entire era, and usually stars as the lead in Marlowe’s plays, the majority of which are specifically written for him. As well, the _Rose_ was built and is owned by Philip Henslowe, the famous theatre impresario and entrepreneur, until Lucy wonders if a young William Shakespeare himself might be in the corps. It is undeniably rather thrilling.

The doors are shut, the drama begins, and Lucy notices that theatre etiquette, as you might expect from the ability to hurl foodstuffs at incompetent actors, is definitely not the same as today. People talk, jostle, fart, smoke pipes, yell comments after (and sometimes during) long-winded soliloquies, have low-level feuds with their neighbors who are standing in their spaces, and otherwise seem to be paying attention to the action on stage only half the time. But they are equally rapturous: they whoop and whistle and laugh at the funny parts, they hang onto the high drama, they cry at the sad parts, and otherwise express appreciation in a way that a modern person would have a hard time doing unironically. There’s no scenery, but the costumes are lavish, and Ned Alleyn, a tall, commanding man with a natural gravitas, delivers the difficult, flowery dialogue with apparent ease. When the players troop off at the interval, the applause is general. Lucy doesn’t think there are ladies’ loos around here (it would probably be even more difficult to go than it is at the Old Vic), unless she wants to run out and find a semi-private corner. She is just debating whether she wants to when a man walks onto the stage and, as the intermission amusement, begins to tell very, very dirty jokes.

Lucy lets out a small squeaking noise, once more causing Flynn to look down. “I’m sorry,” she says, even as she knows that Elizabethans are notoriously fond of bawdy jokes and wordplay, swear inventively and often, have plenty of sex, and otherwise are far from prudes. “I just – didn’t realize this was part of the show.”

“Oh, it is.” Flynn raises an eyebrow. “Are Lady Clairmont’s delicate ears burning?”

Lucy swats his arm, annoyed, and he gives her a look that is really too smug. It’s certainly not that she’s a blushing damsel, but most of the humor is of the “bitches be crazy” variety, and while the c-word is just a matter-of-fact name for women’s genitals and not anything outstandingly pejorative, Lucy’s feminist sensibilities are still chafed by having to listen to it multiple times in a row. (Then again, there is another rant to be had on why this is apparently the worst curse word in the modern world, and you could just walk around for five minutes in Glasgow and get the same effect.) Finally, due to a combination of this and the quantity of beer she drank earlier, which means the pee situation is getting urgent and she doesn’t think she can hold it for another half, she gets to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”

Flynn obligingly moves aside to let her squeeze past him, though Lucy can sense him looking after her as she descends the stairs. After all, this is the first time they have been out of each other’s direct line of sight since arriving in 1590, and even for a quick dash out to the toilet, it’s still a bit stressful. She reaches the ground floor without any catastrophes, however, and follows the crowd outside, where the necessary is located: a small wooden shack, used by both men and women. There’s a line, because some things never change, and when it’s Lucy’s turn, she steps inside and notes that yes, it smells exactly as rank as you would expect. She squats over the hole rather than sitting all the way down, and since paper is a rare and luxurious commodity and you definitely do not wipe your ass with it, a bit of damp rag is provided instead. She thinks she’ll go without, gives herself a few good shakes, and emerges with abject relief into the yard, which is almost fresh by comparison. Well. That was an experience she can do without having again.

It’s then, off in a corner of the courtyard, sitting with his boots propped up on a barrel and smoking a long-stemmed pipe, enjoying the golden late-afternoon light and the success of the show thus far, that she spots none other than Christopher Marlowe. She hesitates, wondering if this is like seeing a celebrity eating at McDonald’s when they probably just want to be left alone, or if by sitting out here instead of backstage, Marlowe is implicitly inviting praise from his adoring public. After another pause, she decides that she’ll kick herself forever if she doesn’t do it, and tiptoes in his direction. “Er – Master Marlowe?” she squeaks, having failed at short notice to come up with anything else and hoping very much that this is what she is supposed to call him. “I just wanted to say, I – I’m a great admirer of your work.”

The playwright looks up in surprise, caught by her strange accent, the fact that it is a woman addressing him – and then, as he takes her in at full length, something else. He blows out a smoke ring, eyeing her up and down. Then he says, “Thou art a witch.”

Since she’s addressed him with the formal “you” out of habit, his answering with “thou,” the prerogative of the social superior to the lesser, can’t help but feel like an unspoken point on this particular daemon’s opinion of his fellow creatures. Lucy winces, since he doesn’t need to go saying that too loudly; the Berwick witch trials are this December, after all. He hasn’t thanked her for the compliment, that’s for sure, and she flushes. “I’ll – if I’ve disturbed you, I can go.”

“Nay need.” Marlowe puts down his pipe, still considering her. “Thou art a comely enough wench, and I hath no more intended for the evening, when the playing is done. If thee wish to return hence at that time, I suppose we can have ado.”

“I – ” Lucy opens her mouth, then shuts it. It hits her in a mortifying rush that Marlowe thinks that she, an unaccompanied woman coming to tell him she is an “admirer” of his “work,” is trying to pick him up like a theatre groupie. Apparently he thinks she’s hot enough to have ado, which is mildly flattering, but this is definitely an impression that needs to be corrected posthaste. “I – no, no, I am a married woman. I only meant – your plays.” Most of Marlowe’s most famous works haven’t been written yet, and he is still just one of a number of anonymous playwrights cranking out material for the London stage. It isn’t even usually customary to announce the authors, hence why there’s so much scholarly kerfuffle about establishing Shakespeare’s canon. “If I did give the impression otherwise, I pray your pardon.”

“Married?” From Marlowe’s tone, he doesn’t think that’s a total disqualifier. “Does thy husband attend the playing with you this e’en, then?”

“I – yes, he does.” Lucy is just wondering whether she should introduce herself by name when Marlowe spots someone over her shoulder, and his whole face changes. She turns around to see Flynn, evidently having come in anxious search of her in case the toilet run turned literally shitty, and by Marlowe’s expression, Lucy can tell at once that his disdain for other creatures does not extend to vampires, or at least this vampire. In fact, for a further instant before he controls it, she isn’t really in any doubt. And of course Flynn has no idea, because Flynn is always completely oblivious when people are in love with him.

“My fine fellow,” Marlowe says, after a moment too long. “I had not known thou wert at the theatre today. I could have arranged a far better welcome. And with thy  – ” His eyes cut to Lucy, clearly unpleasantly surprised by this development. “Wife?”

“She – is, yes,” Flynn says. “Married just after Easter.”

“That would be only – ten days ago, at most?” Marlowe raises both eyebrows. “With no banns read, and no word to thine own brethren of the society? That was uncommonly hasty matrimony indeed. Didst thou even appeal to Her Majesty? Thou knowest how she feels about her favorites marrying without her warrant.”

Flynn starts to say something, gets a slightly panicked look that means he hasn’t thought this far through the cover story, and settles for nodding stoutly. “Aye, we did.”

Marlowe looks them both up and down, picks up his pipe as if he is going to need a lot more tobacco to deal with this shit, and smokes in dead silence for several moments. Then he says, in a tone that does not portend him rushing to congratulate them on this happy development and with a sharply formal switch, “You should return inside. The interval is about to end.”

With that, he turns on his heel and walks away, clearly doing his best to affect nonchalance, as Lucy watches him go and thinks with a sinking heart that her first attempt to talk to a historical figure she admires has gone about as badly as it possibly can. They trail on Marlowe’s heels back into the crowded theatre; since it’s May, it will be light long into the evening. In an undertone, Lucy says, “I don’t think he bought that.”

“I forgot that you can’t exactly get married in a hurry,” Flynn admits. “Normally it requires the banns to be read at the parish church three Sundays in a row, then obtaining a license, then waiting another month before the wedding can be held. Even for Shakespeare, when he hastily married Anne Hathaway, it took a fortnight, and that was the expedited version.”

Lucy decides not to remark that Flynn seems to have forgotten quite a lot, because if she was plunged into somewhere she had lived four hundred years ago and was expected to remember everything immediately, she’d be struggling too. “What was that Marlowe said about you being a favorite of the Queen? You just said she knighted you, not that you were a particular star at court.”

“I have worked in. . .. diverse employment for Her Majesty,” Flynn says, after a pause. “What happened with the Armada was only part of it.”

“Diverse employment? What was that, exactly?”

He gives her a look that clearly says he’s not going to discuss sensitive state secrets in public even if nobody can hear them, and this isn’t the time for that conversation anyway. For her part, Lucy is swiftly realizing that this literal walk down memory lane will be a lot more complicated than she was prepared for, and she didn’t think it was going to be easy. But it was a lot simpler to contemplate in the abstract, not in the noisy, smelly, messy reality, and if nothing else, they have already managed to piss off Kit Marlowe on their very first day here, who clearly has some kind of unrequited thing for Flynn and was blindsided by the ham-fisted Sudden Marriage reveal. That is not going to make him ready to put in a good word for them at the School of Night, and if he is inclined to act any more tangibly on his jealousy, there could be other problems. This is the man who gets killed in a tavern brawl; he is not shy about doing things the bare-knuckled way. Not that Lucy thinks he’s going to sneak up behind her and murder her one night, not really, but that’s not even to mention the Queen. When Walter Raleigh marries Bess Throckmorton without Elizabeth’s permission, both of them are imprisoned for months in the Tower of London and remain out of favour for five years. Lucy _really_ isn’t up for that.

She is distracted through the second half of _Tamburlaine_ , tries to remind herself to enjoy the experience, and is relieved when the painted curtain falls and the players parade out to take their bows. They’re all men, of course, and the boys who have been playing the female parts look as if they are ready to get out of their falsies and wigs. Ned Alleyn graciously accepts the lion’s share of the adulation, as well as the flowers and tokens handed to him from the crowd, and Lucy is reminded irresistibly of Ben Affleck in _Shakespeare in Love._ She is very tired and hopes that they don’t have to spend any more time walking around before they can go back to the inn. As they emerge into the blue evening, the sun low on the horizon but still not close to set, Flynn can clearly tell she’s flagging. He buys her a bowl of potage for supper, and they sit on the river wall, most of the revelers starting to filter home in advance of curfew, but a few still look like they want to get the most out of the holiday. The soup is thick and hot and sticks to the ribs, and Lucy eats without saying much.

When they’re done, they return the bowl to the soup-seller, then make their way back to the inn and upstairs to their room. Lucy has been afraid that they’ll have to share, as most landlords aren’t terribly conscientious about packing in as many paying customers as there is space for, and you could often expect to share the room and even the bed with several other strangers. Fortunately, they have the place to themselves, and if Flynn had to pay extra for that, Lucy doesn’t care. She sits down on the bed with a whoof, stares off into space for a very long moment, then jerks back to herself with alarm. “Are there going to be bedbugs?”

“Hard to say.” Flynn shrugs. “In noble households, they tend to wash the linen weekly, at least, but for a common inn in Southwark, they could be somewhat less conscientious. I’ll check, if you want me to.”

“Yes, thank you.” Lucy gets off the bed, even as her muscles complain at the necessity, and since they’re not going out again, strips off her muddy, sweat-stained dress. There is a bowl and pitcher of water for freshening up, but nothing like a private bathroom; there’s a chamber pot for number one, and a privy closet down the hall for number two. Having had all the experience of Elizabethan toilets that she needs, Lucy doesn’t plan to make use of it, but she is already missing the modern world, which – despite its numerous and extensive faults – would have a damn shower. Still, this is just day one, she can’t buckle under now, and she splashes the water on her dusty, sunburned face and neck while Flynn strips down the bed, declares it bug-free, and makes it up again. The sheets aren’t exactly squeaky-clean – indeed, they’re somewhat yellowish, and definitely have not been washed between them and the last occupants of this room, but at least they won’t get eaten alive. The bed, moreover, is much too short for Flynn: his legs will dangle a solid six inches over the end, unless he curls up on his side like a shrimp. He mutters under his breath, but grudgingly accepts his fate.

It’s not that late – it’s still not even fully dark – but Lucy is fighting to keep her eyes open, and digs her pajamas out of the bag, which she decided to bring along since honestly, nobody wants to go six months without their own PJs. It is strange almost to surreality to put on her comfortable old Stanford T-shirt and flannel sleep pants, dig out her toiletries and brush her teeth with a tube of modern Crest in her sixteenth-century hotel room. She was going to suggest opening the window for some fresh air, but it is likely to be anything but fresh, especially after the food and heat and waste of the day, and besides, the general belief is that the night air is poisonous. It could definitely let in bugs, at any rate, and she isn’t feeling up to that. She gets into bed, and can feel sleep dragging her down like a weight. The pillows are round bolsters and the covers are woolen blankets with an embroidered counterpane on top, it’s comfortable enough, and after the day she’s had, Lucy would settle for some mostly clean straw. She closes her eyes and abjectly loses consciousness.

She sleeps like the dead, doesn’t even stir, and briefly manages to forget where she is when she wakes the next morning, in the instant before she opens her eyes. It’s like the opposite of having had a weird dream and finding yourself safe in your own bed; she is back in the dream, and that is now the reality. Flynn is asleep next to her, looking decidedly cramped, and she supposes he’s eager to get to his own house where, presumably, the furniture will be made to accommodate him. Is he going to send the letter today? Did Marlowe tell anyone about meeting them last night? Lucy isn’t sure if Kit knows that Master Flynn and Lord Clairmont are the same person, but as already demonstrated, he can cause plenty of trouble even without that.

Flynn wakes up soon after that, they wash and get into their clothes as best they can, and make their way down to the common room. Since breakfast isn’t much of a thing, they pay a few pence for some bread and a cup of ale apiece. The average Elizabethan takes their main meal, dinner, at eleven o’clock AM, and then a somewhat smaller supper around six PM. How many courses there are and how elaborate depends on how rich you are, but in general, nobody goes too hungry around here. There aren’t any major famines or food crises, a welcome respite after the rugged years of the late medieval era, and trade is booming. But the last thing Lucy feels like is more beer, and she hopes they find some drinkable water soon, otherwise she’s going to start running a constant dehydration headache. As they emerge into the morning, in search of a bookseller or scrivener or other place that will sell them quill and paper, she says, “Doesn’t there have to be a fountain? Water for washing?”

“From the Thames or from the tributaries, but you wouldn’t want to drink it without boiling it.” Flynn glances down at her. “But you’re a witch, remember? Couldn’t you conjure up witch-water?”

Lucy opens her mouth, then shuts it, somewhat dismayed that such a seemingly obvious solution hasn’t occurred to her. Then again, she’s only had anything close to her full powers for just a few weeks, she’s not used to turning to magic for solutions, and she isn’t sure that she could make just a sedate little cup of water without a full-scale deluge. Her ability with witch-rain tends to be tied to moments of particular emotional distress, to Flynn leaving in Sept-Tours and being tortured by Emma in the ruined castle, and the last thing she wants, if she’s avoided burning down London, is to flood it instead. Still, if the alternative is to booze it up for six months, she may have to try.

They wend their way into the streets, and walk ten-odd minutes up to London Bridge. Lucy wants to ask if anywhere will be open this early on a Saturday, before remembering that it’s a regular business day and that most places open at six, close for dinner between eleven and one, then reopen for the rest of the afternoon until five. They make their way onto the bridge, which is decorated with dung from the animal traffic, and have to duck as a human resident opens a fourth-story window and negligently empties a chamber pot without regard for anyone who might be walking below. About halfway along, they find a scrivener’s stall, Flynn spends several minutes arguing the clerk into letting him write his own message rather than dictate it, and finally takes the quill, watched darkly by the clerk, who probably has it come out of his wages if a customer wastes too much paper and ink. Flynn thinks for a bit, then scribbles up a letter, sands it to dry the ink, folds it, and stamps it with hot wax. He tosses the clerk an extra penny for his trouble, looks around, and spots one of the boys who loiter about in hopes of being asked to run an errand for a gentleman. “Take thou this to my brother at Clairmont House, on the Strand,” he orders. “Hand it to him and no other, and say only that it came from a friend. Havest thou ken?”

The boy agrees that he does, takes the letter, and runs off. They wait what feels like a too-long time, to Lucy’s nervous mind, until the boy returns without the letter, claims that he has in fact delivered it, and after Flynn has quizzed him on what the house looked like and what his brother said when he got the message to prove that he did, pays him. The bridge is busy with morning traffic by now, and it takes them a while to shuffle to the far side. This is the City proper, contained within the vast, rambling Roman walls that bound it on three sides; the Thames itself serves as the fourth. There are seven gates, and when someone has just been executed for treason, their severed, tar-dipped head can be displayed above any of these, or on the bridge, until it has rotted away. Thankfully, they are currently free from such gruesome adornments, and Lucy and Flynn step into the middle of the main thoroughfare. It’s another warm, mild spring day, and the streets are busy (and fragrant).

“Where are we going?” Lucy asks, as they dodge carts, cows, pigs, merchants, household servants, and a thousand and one beggars. There are a lot of rough sleepers in London in the present anyway, but it’s impossible not to notice them here. Some have crutches or missing limbs, claiming that they’re veterans of fighting the Armada (they probably are, since disabled veterans getting ignored and left to shift for themselves is nothing new), others sit or huddle in corners, calling, “Goodman, goodman, prithee alms,” at everyone who passes. Elizabeth and her Privy Council pass various acts for the relief of the poor, but still haven’t managed to substantively dent the scale of the problem. “Is there something else we – ”

“There.” Flynn nods at Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, which – up close – is so huge and splendid and imposing that it’s strange to think that in less than a hundred years, it won’t be there anymore. It’s already in considerable disrepair, it’s used as a stable and barracks by Oliver Cromwell and the Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War, and then of course, it burns. But it’s here right now, it used to enjoy a reputation as one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Europe, and that is where they seem to be going. “I want to hear the news.”

Lucy is briefly confused about how this fits into that, but then she remembers that there’s something called Paul’s Cross in the courtyard outside, an open-air pulpit which is an attraction for celebrity preachers and other public speeches, and where Londoners, in the absence of social media or newspapers, gather to hear the latest. There’s a crowd listening to whoever is having a good harangue at the moment, and as they step inside the cathedral, Lucy is startled to discover that this function is by no means confined to the exterior. The place would be filled with tourists in the present day, but here, it’s jam-packed with dandies in fancy cloaks, known as “Paul’s walkers,” who speed-walk around and collect all the hot-off-the-presses gossip. Far from a solemn sanctuary of sacred worship or whatever else you’d expect, this is the place to see and be seen. Souvenir-sellers offer food and trinkets, a stray pig wanders by, and there are a few women with painted faces who look like they make a good living. Yes, apparently, you can hire prostitutes in St. Paul’s. Somewhere in Rome, the Pope is having nightmares about the heathenry of the English Protestants. In 1570, Pius V issued a bull, _Regnans in Excelsis,_ releasing Elizabeth’s subjects from any allegiance to her as a heretic, excommunicated all of England, and offered pre-emptive absolution to anyone who murdered her. There have been an uptick of plots ever since, and Mary Queen of Scots was executed three years ago, in 1587. But the people, by and large, are fiercely loyal to the Virgin Queen and hate Popish treachery, so that just sucks for him.

Just then, however, Lucy has a tiny fraction of sympathy, and a touch of indignation that a precious historical landmark whose days are numbered isn’t being given more reverence. But after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, breaking up the Catholic church’s vast land monopolies and extremely wealthy religious houses, and ending the medieval monastic orders that the younger sons and daughters of the nobility entered into as a career, all religious buildings in Reformation England have been given a new purpose. Besides, there’s the fact that for the people of this city, St. Paul’s is a working building, part of the fabric of their daily life, and it’s only the people of four hundred years in the future who view its successor as a sterile, valuable artifact, look but don’t touch. They don’t even let you take pictures in the present St. Paul’s, God forbid (Lucy discovered this when she tried to photograph the Whispering Gallery and got told off by a stern British matron). History is made by time, she thinks, remembering Rufus joking that they’d better hope Jessica didn’t steal the Mona Lisa in Renaissance Florence. If Jessica did, it wouldn’t matter when she returned to the present with it. It might have some incidental value as a lost work of Leonardo’s, but it wouldn’t be the worldwide icon, shuffled past by tens of millions of people in the Louvre, parodied and universally recognized and whatever else. It needed those hundreds of years to get famous, so stealing it right after it was created wouldn’t have done anything. Nobody would care.

Lucy and Flynn have barely entered the nave when one of the Paul-walkers chugs up next to them, slightly breathless in his urge to make sure he doesn’t miss anything. “How do you the morning, goodman, good lady? Have you the tidings?”

It isn’t clear whether this means he has tidings or is hoping they do, and Lucy decides to let Flynn handle him. Then she looks over and notices that several of the merchant stalls include enterprising sorts who are offering up the cathedral’s old cartularies and priceless historical documents to be picked through like a box of vintage clothing at a rummage sale. Lucy just manages to hold back a squeal of indignation, but then she remembers that this was listed on the Ashmole fragment, one of the places they were supposed to visit. Is there something here, a vital scrap or manuscript fragment to be dug out from the chaos?

Lucy hesitates, then, leaving Flynn to Gabby George, ventures in the direction of the nearest seller. Flynn gave her some of their money, and she clears her throat. “How much?”

The seller – a slightly slovenly bearded weasel-type – jumps, looks surprised, and then glances at her up and down, the usual split-second assessment of class and standing that everyone has performed thus far, but feels somehow more threatening here. Evidently he isn’t impressed by what he sees. “Who art thou?” he asks dismissively. “Thy mistress does thee no credit by dressing thee in such tatty rags. ‘Tisn’t a sale I’d wish to make, surely.”

“Excuse m – ?” Apparently he thinks that Lucy is not just a servant, but the servant of someone so miserably cheapskate as to not even bother to put her in household livery, or to preserve her own reputation by sending her servants forth handsomely clad, as proper embodiments of her wealth and prestige. “Never mind that, and no, I’m not a servant. I have money, I can pay.”

“And where is it thou hails from?” He has, of course, noted her strange accent as something else to be a dick about. “Another foreigner that infests the city? Well then, I suppose there is payment I could take from thee, if that is what thou art good for. Come on, sweeting, a kiss and a fumble, thou can look through as much as thou pleases. If thee can even read, but – ”

Revolted, Lucy backs away; she is _not_ being felt up by this misogynist, xenophobic asshole even in the name of searching for Ashmole clues. Not only that, but he had to insult her intelligence on top of it, and she wonders whether to verbally blow him up or to just perform the smile of every woman dealing with Men ™ and walk away. It would be very satisfying to tear him a new asshole, but she’s also aware of the undeniable vulnerability of a strange woman in a strange place, who isn’t going to open her mouth and put herself in danger no matter if it would be a Win for Feminism. She feels powerless again, small, and manages a tight little nod before backing up another step – and running into someone behind her. For a terrible moment she thinks it’s one of this guy’s buddies, but no, thank God. It’s Flynn.

“Beg pardon,” Flynn says, in a deceptively polite tone. “Wert thou speaking ungently to my wife, churl?”

“I – ” The man, who is half Flynn’s size, looks him up and down, and while he can clearly tell that he is also foreign, decides that it is not a wise time to ask from where. “Prithee pardons, goodman. Your – your wife? She does – I thought only that – ”

Haughtily ignoring his babbling, Flynn glances at Lucy, as if to see what she would like him to do with this git. Their eyes meet, and Lucy remembers the part where you can challenge people to account for their shameful conduct, that fighting and brawling and whatever else is fairly commonplace, and she is tired of the fact that everyone seems to have assumed that she is a loose woman or a penniless servant or whatever else. She is the white queen, Lady Clairmont, and while nobody knows it yet, that doesn’t mean she is going to put up with it.

She gives Flynn half a nod.

He shrugs, cracks his knuckles, and with that, lifts Weasel Misogynist Man effortlessly by throat and crotch and hurls him twenty feet across the nave like a shot-put. He hits a yellow-curtained booth, crashes down with a gurgling sound, and lies there in a pitiful heap, whimpering, as heads turn, the Paul-walkers go absolutely mental (they are going to be chewing over this delightful scandal for _days_ ) and Flynn decides that they should probably get out of here. He takes Lucy’s arm, they do some quality speed-walking of their own to the door, and emerge into the day. Then he says, “What the devil was that about?”

Lucy explains in brief, which causes Flynn to look even more disgruntled, as if he wants to go whale on the guy a few more times just for good measure. “I should have warned you about that,” he says. “London has gotten especially paranoid, violent, and racist about foreigners, even though they make up a small minority of the population. It’s almost impossible to get English citizenship, and only citizens can be aldermen or stand for Lord Mayor or receive membership in the guilds. I’ve been called all number of things depending on whether they think I’m Irish, French, or Spanish, as they don’t like any of them.”

“Wow, the more things change?” Lucy looks around, half-expecting to see Nigel Farage driving up in a Brexit battle bus. “But I need to get out of these clothes. Marlowe thought I was a whore last night, and our friend in there thought I was some especially low-class servant. So – ”

“We can go to the Royal Exchange,” Flynn says doubtfully. “It’s just down the street, it’s essentially an Elizabethan shopping mall. But we can’t dress too fancily while we’re still posing as commoners, so – ”

“Getting me something that doesn’t cause everyone we meet to think that I’m a hussy would be a good start,” Lucy says, with an edge in her voice. “Don’t you agree, darling?”

Flynn can’t think of anything to say to that, and so they walk down to the Royal Exchange. As promised, it is a grand open-air plaza, with luxury shops in the handsomely colonnaded cloisters that surround it. There are haberdashers, weavers, lace-workers, embroiderers, milliners, tailors, trimmers, clothiers, and other establishments catering to the fashionable Elizabethan, though for the best jewelry, you have to go to the goldsmiths in Cheapside. That is out of their present price range anyway, and they just need to get Lucy something that makes her look like a gentlewoman. It ends up being a little more pricey than they’d like – two of their precious four crowns – to purchase her a proper outfit, so Past Flynn really should hurry his butt up and leave so they can move in before the money runs out. But once they finally leave the Exchange with Lucy’s new clothes wrapped up in a parcel, they are hopeful that they can bring an end to the mishaps at least on this account.

When they get back to the inn, however, they discover a new problem. There aren’t locks on the doors because any intruder would be tackled by the landlord and the servants, and there’s not exactly a hotel safe to put things in. They have hidden their bags in the cupboard and put the handy security stick through the latches (as if that would really help), but when they step inside, it’s apparent that someone has been in here. The bags are not where they left them, and considering that they have their things from the future in here, as well as the Ashmole pages, they drop everything and frantically search through all of it. After ten minutes of sheer panic, they can verify that nothing has been taken, but Flynn still is scowling deeply as he sits back on his heels. “I’m keeping the pages with me from here on in,” he announces. “At least until we get to my house.”

“Who could have done this?” Lucy wonders what they made of her modern toiletries. But the two of them are already unexplained, foreign, and don’t need to be attracting questions about what strange and eldritch items they have brought with them. Hey, if some of these people stole deodorant, they’re welcome to it. “Someone in particular?”

“There can be thieves in places like this,” Flynn admits. “Sometimes they work here. You’re usually advised to check the weight of your purse when you arrive and when you leave. That was careless of me. We’ve been lucky this time, but it means someone’s noticed us, or at least wondered if we had anything worth the taking. We should lie low for the next few days. We’re not on the parish rolls anywhere, so our absence from church tomorrow won’t be fined – it’s twelve pence for every Sunday service you miss – and I’ll be going to the French Huguenot church where I’m expected to be seen. The other me, that is.”

“Right.” Lucy is still rattled, and doesn’t like the idea of leaving their things unsupervised again anyway. She looks around, as if the perpetrator might be lurking behind a wardrobe. “You’re Catholic, though. Aren’t you?”

“Technically, yes,” Flynn says. “But as long as you conform publicly and attend a Protestant church, nobody asks too many questions into what you privately believe. That’s Elizabeth’s policy, after both her half-siblings persecuted Catholics and Protestants, respectively. I swore an oath of conformity to the Church of England when I received my knighthood, so my religious standing isn’t in question, but I need to be careful to avoid looking like a recusant.”

Lucy rubs her face. She wasn’t raised particularly religious, since it’s not entirely a thing that gels with being a witch – indeed, when you know the goddess exists and is a real, actionable magical force in your life, it’s hard to put too much stock in whatever fusty patriarchal so-and-so is presented as the be-all and end-all. But this was definitely one of the main topics they covered before leaving, and she knows that it must be taken very seriously. As Lord and Lady Clairmont, they will have to make sure to be in church every week, so she might as well enjoy her last lazy Sunday while she has it. If it’s possible to actually relax around here. It’s noisy, cramped, and stuffy, there is no internet or Netflix to veg out with, and frankly, if she is going to be shut into a small room with Flynn for the next few days, Lucy has other ideas about how they could spend that time. But he flipped out fairly severely the last time they attempted to seal the deal, back at Denise and Michelle’s, and she doesn’t want to push him again.

The rest of the day passes very slowly. That evening, Flynn goes downstairs to buy them supper and ask a few pointed questions of the landlord about who he let snoop in their stuff, while Lucy paces back and forth, worries, and finally gets so hot that she opens the window anyway, poisonous air be damned. It still reeks, but she’s almost getting used to it by now, and at least it lets some breeze in. Flynn returns, glances at it with an expression as if he thinks someone might climb in off the drainpipe, but doesn’t say anything. They sit on the bed to eat, pewter plates balanced on their knees, as Lucy tries to resist asking how long he thinks it will take himself to leave. He’s doing the best he can, and as noted, she is very well aware that Garcia Flynn de Clermont is nothing if not stubborn.

Since there’s nothing else to do, they once more go to bed fairly early. Lucy is then woken up the next morning by something splashing on her face, as there is a leak in the plaster above her head and in true English fashion, it has followed up two days of relatively nice weather by being approximately forty degrees, grey, and drizzly. She grimaces and gets up, scouting around for something to patch it with, since she doesn’t want to wake Flynn and get him to move the bedstead, though she’s sure he could do it. There’s a bucket by the window, possibly for these sorts of situations, and she doesn’t want the bedclothes to get soaked, thus rendering them damp and musty for the remainder of their time here. No lazy lie-in for her, apparently, unless she wants to climb up and try to patch it with her old dress or something, but that seems dangerous. So Lucy pads barefoot across the creaky floor to get the bucket, glances out the window – and freezes.

There’s someone standing in the street outside. It’s foggy and grey and damp, and the figure is hooded and cloaked, so she has no idea who it is, if it’s even there because of them, or if it’s just someone trying not to get wet on the way to church. But it’s standing right below Lucy and Flynn’s window, shadowed head tilted back to stare directly at it, and as Lucy instinctively dodges to one side so it can’t see her, it doesn’t move an inch. It remains standing there, taking it in, assessing. Then with slow, measured steps, it vanishes under the steep overhangs of the houses on the crookback lane, and into the morning mist.

“Lucy?” Flynn’s voice comes hoarsely from the bed, as she’s still standing there, staring after it. He pushes himself up on an elbow. “What are you doing?”

“S – sorry.” She turns around. “There was a leak, it woke me up. Then I just – just now. There was someone standing outside our window, looking up at us.”

Flynn frowns. “Who?”

“I don’t know, I couldn’t see their face. They had a hood on.” Lucy turns back toward him, even as Flynn limbers out of bed, can reach the ceiling without having to stand on anything, and starts to contrive a makeshift patch job, mumbling under his breath. “Do you think it’s the same person who broke in here yesterday?”

“Could be,” Flynn says, in a tone of voice which says that he almost hopes it is, so at least they have one unknown entity after them, and not several. “I’ll go out and look if you – ”

“No, I don’t know if that would be a good idea.” Even if he’s a vampire, Lucy doesn’t want him out alone – and, selfishly, she doesn’t want to be left here by herself either. She shivers; there is no central heating, the only insulation is wattle-and-daub, and the air is far from warm. _“Do_ you think Marlowe told someone about us?”

“He’s a colleague of mine,” Flynn says. “I trust him. He couldn’t report on us without also incriminating himself, and he wouldn’t do that. It could just be that our friend from St. Paul’s sent someone to dutifully revenge himself on me. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Lucy actually hopes that Weasel Misogynist Man has a Weasel Misogynist Brother, as it would be a relatively easy problem to fix and not something – probably, at least – that would cause them long-term issues. That still leaves the question of how he would have tracked down where they were staying, and who might have told him about them, but one thing at a time. Flynn has managed to stop the rain from getting inside for now, and lies back down, making a wordless gesture of invitation. She hesitates, then climbs into bed again, profoundly grateful that Flynn wraps his arms around her and snuggles her into his chest in a comforting fashion without having to be asked. They can’t cuddle properly, since the bed is still too short and he has to pull his knees up, but it’s nice, and she buries her nose in his collarbone, tucking her head underneath his chin. He doesn’t seem worried. Maybe she shouldn’t be either. But nonetheless, as she lies there and listens to the rain, Lucy cannot shake the chill.


	2. Lady Clairmont

It is three days until the news comes, via the boy that Flynn has paid to set up camp in St. Paul’s and report back periodically, that Lord Clairmont has left London. Further in-person appearances have been felt to be unwise, just in case Weasel Misogynist Man does have a league of vengeful weasel minions, so they have spent the time lying low, except for venturing out to an ordinary for supper (the tavern food is… well, it is probably better than whatever they had here in 1490). There is a pack of cards in the Italian suit – swords, batons, cups, and coins – and Flynn has been teaching Lucy the various games enjoyed by the nobility. There have also been dancing lessons (everyone dances, and Lucy, who has two left feet, hopes nobody important asks her), singing (that at least she isn’t terrible at) and reading the _Book of Common Prayer_ that Flynn acquired from the print shop down the row. Between that, it’s curtsy practice, quizzes on court protocol, and making artful conversation. Indeed, the intensity of this mini-Elizabethan boot camp is such that Lucy falls asleep exhausted at eight o’clock every night, and has weird dreams about William Shakespeare chasing her in a giant shoe, yelling about her disgraceful table manners.

This, however, has been what they are waiting for, and she is more than ready to get out of the inn, even if a whole new set of challenges awaits them at the house. Not that they can just pick up and rush over there only hours after Past Flynn has left, especially since they were reminded by Marlowe just how flimsy the marriage cover story actually is. They have to give it another day or two at least, by which time Flynn could conceivably return with a sudden wife. He will have to say that he married her in France, and had to leave to meet her when she arrived in England. Poor Past Flynn, whenever he gets back from his fictional trip to Dalmatia with no Raven King library and everyone demanding to know why he got married to a woman he has never heard of, is really going to be in hot water later, but that is his misfortune. Lucy wonders how badly they are screwing up the timeline already, if this is going to affect their meeting in the future, if Flynn subconsciously remembers her and that’s why he’s drawn to her at the Bodleian, but this is all way beyond her pay grade. She’s going to go crazy if she stays here much longer, and she would rather feel like she’s doing something useful, rather than curtsy practice.

It’s another two days until Flynn decides that they can risk it. It’s a week since they arrived, Lucy is practically climbing the walls, and they are running low on money, since the landlord has decided to charge them more for a long-term stay (after all, there are no rules or standardized regulations or consumer protection acts that say he can’t). They get dressed, and Lucy hopes the emperor’s new clothes will convince people that she is not someone Flynn picked out of a French brothel or wherever they’re likely to think she came from. Then they collect their things, and make their way out of the inn for what Lucy devoutly prays is the last time. There is the small wrinkle that Lord Clairmont, having departed on horseback, is unlikely to be returning on foot, but Flynn decides they’ll just have to say that his horse got stolen. Lucy wonders why anyone would believe that he, a vampire and a soldier with hundreds of years of experience, wouldn’t be able to get it back without breaking a sweat, but if she starts adding more plot holes to this, they’re doomed.

They make their way across the city toward the Strand, the boulevard that connects the Palace of Whitehall, the principal seat of the English monarchs, with the City of London. It is an extremely tony bit of real estate. The earls of Arundel and Leicester and Sir Nicholas Bacon have all owned mansions here in the past, William Cecil and Walter Raleigh are current residents, and it is crammed with goldsmiths and silversmiths and other expensive and luxurious craftsmen and shopfronts. As a baron, Flynn is among the lower-ranking of its residents, but thanks to centuries of de Clermont wealth, he is indubitably one of the richest. This is the equivalent of Holland Park or Kensington or other ultra-rich neighborhoods in modern London, and Lucy hopes that someone, spotting them on foot and still not looking completely respectable, does not call ye olde constables.

Clairmont House is on the western end of the Strand, almost on top of where Charing Cross Station is in the present day. It is handsomely faced in stone, looking somewhat like an Oxford college, and a high gate divides the inner precincts from the street outside. They stand there looking at it, adorned with the de Clermont coat of arms, the lion and the wolf, in painted and gilded plaster. It gives Lucy a shock, for some stupid reason. Obviously, she knew he was _here,_ that this was the whole point of coming, but to see tangible proof that he was alive over four hundred years ago, the great span of his life, is still somewhat sobering.

With that, Flynn shrugs, lifts the latch, and pushes the gate open, striding into the courtyard with Lucy trailing timidly in his wake. Apparently the strategy is to just barge in as if they own the place, since technically, they do. Doors are opening, men in household livery are appearing – and then, upon catching sight of their master in completely different clothes, on foot, with an unfamiliar woman, they all stop short, profoundly confused. “My lord?” one of them says. “We were not expecting you back so soon. What became of the errand to Dalmatia? The library of Corvinus?”

“It was…” Flynn clears his throat. “I regret the necessity of such a fable, but I could not yet tell thee the truth. I had to go in secret to the coast, and meet someone as she arrived from France.” He clears his throat. “This is Lucy, Lady Clairmont. My – my wife.”

Dead silence reigns over the courtyard. It is not the habit for servants to question or backtalk their masters, but the expression on every single face is clearly wondering if this is Freaky Friday and they missed the memo. They’re also entirely male faces. As a bachelor household, Flynn’s retinue, valets, pages, messengers, servers, clients, chamberlains, grooms, gentlemen, and yeomen are all, well, men, since any decent woman would not work alone in such a place without serious suspicion of her reputation (probably warranted, if only since men are the worst). The only female servant is the laundress, who does not live there; even the scullions are young boys. Now they have a lady of the house, which means they need to hire female attendants, and there is not Craigslist or another convenient place to post a help-wanted ad. Send somebody to St. Paul’s to make an announcement, probably, but that is much further ahead than anyone is presently thinking. A seagull flies overhead and just misses pooping on someone’s shoulder. Then finally the steward, the highest-ranking member of the staff and thus the only one entitled to ask if the master has lost his mind, ventures, “Your wife, my lord?”

“Yes.” Flynn beckons for her, and Lucy steps up, feeling everyone stare holes through her. They’re not trying to be rude, but this just does not compute in any conceivable fashion. “We will be taking up residence here, and I expect that thou shalt do her all the courtesy of her rank and station. I shall expect as well proper arrangements to be made. Is it clear?”

More looks are exchanged down the line. One of the servants – the head groom, Lucy thinks, though she can’t be sure – seems the closest to demanding if this is a practical joke. He is slight, sandy-haired, and sports a fashionable curled mustache, and from the look on his face, his employer has put him through extensive nonsense before, but nothing to match this. Finally the steward clears his throat, decides that he’s just going to cling to protocol extra hard while he figures out what the fuck is happening, and bows to Lucy. “Welcome to your new home, Lady Clairmont. I am Robert Parry, steward of the estate and kinsman to the late Lady Blanche, favored companion of her Majesty. I will see at once to providing for your comfort and security. Have you brought a lady’s maid with you from France?”

“I – no.” Lucy isn’t sure what the story behind their marriage is supposed to be, but most likely something about running away and leaving all her things behind, escaping a bad situation or abusive fiancé, or something else from which Flynn could have conceivably swooped in to heroically save her. “I had to go in haste. I have only what you see.”

Parry turns crisply to one of the grooms and gives orders for someone to go out and hire a woman, no trollops or jezebels, and one of good moral character and reliable references. Previous experience working in a noble household is desirable, and she should be also of moderate behavior and discreet tongue. Lucy wonders if that means she can be trusted not to gossip (or run to the authorities and turn them in for witchcraft) upon learning that her master and mistress are supernatural creatures, and thinks that yes, that would definitely be a desirable quality. The entire household and staffing requirements are going to have to be refitted, this probably means a long night for Parry with the books and accounts, and gentlemen are sprinting in every direction, as if to clean up the dirty underwear on the floor before a lady spots it. Not that Lucy thinks there has been much debauchery going on here, or that Flynn runs a slovenly ship, but the requirements for an all-male household are much different than what is considered acceptable for a gently bred lady. It is total chaos.

Lucy stands in the middle of the courtyard, not sure what to do, as people whirl by like tops. Ordinarily she would volunteer to help, but that would be even more déclassé, and everyone would probably feel insulted if she did. She remains hovering like a bird uncertain which one is her nest, until the interior has apparently been declared fit for female habitation and Parry appears to escort her into the main solar, the large sitting room on the second floor where the lord and lady of the house receive guests, undertake recreation, and conduct business. At that, he realizes they also have to acquire a full set of furniture, accessories, clothes, and other accoutrements for her, and spends several minutes asking Lucy what styles and fabrics she prefers. He seems flattered, if somewhat wary, when she assures him that she trusts his taste. Once another squadron of groomsmen have been dispatched, he glances back at her. “We will have your quarters furnished as soon as we might, my lady. If you wish to share my lord’s chambers for the night, I hope that is no discourtesy.”

Lucy is about to ask why it would be a discourtesy, since, you know, they _are_ married (even if Parry is the true MVP here for pretending he believes it) before she remembers that in this era, noble husbands and wives customarily keep their own quarters and their own beds, only coming together for the marital act or in the few aristocratic marriages where love is actually a factor. “No, no,” she says. “This is a great surprise for you, I know. I apologize for all the work we’re making, I didn’t want to – ”

Parry inclines his head, as if to say that this is his job, the mistress does not apologize. He reminds her strongly of Cecilia, another experienced servant of the de Clermont family used to ridiculous situations and sudden witches being dropped into their laps at short notice while they have to scramble to deal with it. He is clearly intensely curious about her, and Lucy wonders how much he knows about the creature side of things. At least the Congregation and the Covenant don’t yet exist, so they can’t get dinged for an illicit interspecies relationship, but that does not equate to broadcasting it around town, and the old prejudices are far from insignificant. Parry is human, and a good steward keeps his master’s secrets no matter how eccentric or inexplicable, but at least he knows Flynn, and has presumably worked for him for several years. A strange witch is a dangerous thing to have under your roof in any era, but this one particularly.

There is another awkward pause as Lucy realizes that Parry is waiting for her leave to go, or for her to give him another order. Gentlemen ushers and other attendants in well-to-do houses are used to being part of the furniture, almost omnipresent; it is considered the height of bad manners and dereliction of duty for the master of the house to walk into his closet and have no one there to serve him. It is expected that a servant will be in earshot at all times, and though the steward has countless other duties and cannot be in one place for long, he still has to ensure that he has her permission before he just walks out. Lucy isn’t sure if there’s an exact protocol for this, but she nods. “Ah, I’m fine here for now. Really.”

Parry looks briefly confused, as the word “fine” is used as a reference to craftsmanship or quality of material and not as an emotional state, but he takes her meaning and bows himself out. Lucy is thus left alone for five minutes, until someone remembers in a panic that they have a mistress now and rushes in to see if she needs anything. She assures him that she doesn’t, but he stoutly takes up a post in the corner just in case. A late dinner is fetched, which Lucy does appreciate, and is just finishing it up when Parry returns to announce that they have three candidates for her lady’s maid, if the mistress would like to examine them and make a suitable selection. He can show them in, if she agrees.

Lucy, still more nonplussed, does so. After ten minutes trying to act as if she very much knows the qualities expected in a maid and has definitely done this before, she ends up picking one Margaret Broxton, who is probably the same age as her but looks quite a bit older, as she has a kind face and if someone is going to be her constant shadow, they should be nice. Margaret is whisked off to have the terms of employment confirmed (she will be paid quarterly, on the Feast of the Annunciation, the Feast of St John the Baptist, Michaelmas, and Christmas, allowed to visit her family on Sundays only, and expected to follow all house rules) and is finally dispatched to return to Lucy. “You may call me Meg, my lady,” she says. “As you please.”

“Ah, okay, Meg.” Lucy bites her tongue, since “okay” is a nineteenth-century Americanism, she always hates it when it pops up in historical fiction, and shakes herself. “Very well. I don’t believe I need anything just the moment, you may. . .”

“Are you sure, my lady?” Meg looks around, then lowers her voice. “I know that you may wish certain sweets or spices, or other manner of savory foods, and I can run to market.”

“That’s kind of you.” Lucy wonders if she is supposed to get into the “thee” and “thou” habit when addressing inferiors, but it still feels too put-on. “But I had my dinner, I should keep until supper. If you wished to – ah – assist Master Parry with the bedroom, or – ?”

“I can, if you like.” Meg is still looking at her with a solicitous expression, which confuses Lucy. “When it comes time for the lying-in, my own sister has had three, I may fetch her from Islington if you wish. Have you any clothes you would like amended?”

“What?” Lucy is more lost than ever. “Clothes? Amended? Why?”

“For the. . .” Meg apparently realizes that subtlety is being wasted here, or thought it wasn’t subtle at all. She makes a gesture toward her stomach. “If you will forgive my impertinence, my lady, have you yet quickened?”

“Have – ” At that, Lucy finally realizes what’s going on, and feels her face scorch like a dragon. Meg, completely understandably upon learning that her new mistress has been married in unreasonable haste to a wealthy nobleman, has firmly concluded that Lucy is pregnant, as almost a quarter of English brides are at their weddings. For that, Lucy thinks darkly, she would actually need to have done the part of it which results in pregnancy (can creatures interbreed? They’re magical beings, but they don’t spring out of toadstool rings, and witches and daemons can obviously mate with humans. Question for later). And as Flynn, a vampire, seems likely to die of old age prior to letting it happen, she is decidedly un-pregnant, thank you very much. She does not want to embarrass Meg, who was just trying to help, but still. “I’m – I’m not actually with child, but thank you.”

“Ah.” Meg nods. “Of course you aren’t.”

That clearly means that she thinks Lucy definitely is and is just too ashamed to confess that she was dishonored by a dashing rake (Garcia Flynn? Dashing rake? _Not_ likely), but it is not her place to pry. She curtsies and withdraws to help Parry with the bedchamber, as ordered, and Lucy rubs the bridge of her nose. She isn’t sure whether or not to laugh or scream.

Lucy does not see Flynn for the rest of the afternoon, as he is busy with the ongoing reordering of the household and/or convincing everyone that he has not gone completely insane. It is debatable how well this goes, but after she has once more confused Meg by not having any embroidery to do or devotions to read, and reminds herself that she should probably dust off that ninth-grade crafting class, she meets him for supper in the dining room. It might be a policy that servants are strategically deaf, but Lucy does not want to talk about all this with sixteenth-century John Smythe standing right there, and probably causes another minor scandal by dismissing the ushers so that it’s just her and Flynn. They regard each other in the flickering candlelight, until she finally says, rather pointedly, “Well.”

“Well.” A corner of Flynn’s mouth twitches. “I promise, it will get less confusing.”

“We’ve basically walked in and turned your entire house upside down in one afternoon,” Lucy says, pouring herself another glass of claret because she goddamn deserves it. “I’ve pretended to know more about wainscoting than any actual human person does, my lady’s maid definitely thinks I’m pregnant, and – ”

Flynn, who has just taken a sip of his own hippocras, chokes, has to put it down, and spends several moments pounding himself on the chest, which is undignified for a senior vampire. Not quite able to meet her eyes, he says weakly, “At least that’s impossible.”

“Indeed,” Lucy says, with somewhat too much of an edge. Partly because she’s genuinely curious, and partly because she wants to see him squirm, she says, “Can vampires breed with witches and daemons? The old-fashioned way? I know they can’t with humans, but – ”

Flynn, who looks as if he was about to pick up his goblet again, decides that on second thought, he’d better not. “If vampires could have children with humans, I can promise you that my brother Gabriel would have discovered it. So no, as you say, they can’t. With other vampires, the only way is to sire blood children. As for witches and daemons, I don’t know. I have heard old stories of creatures who claimed to be half-breeds, though I hate that word, descended from both vampires and witches. I read an interesting theory from another creature geneticist, proposing that elves were the result of cross-breeding – long life from vampires, magical abilities from witches. But even before the Covenant, miscegenation was relatively rare, and I’ve never met anyone who claimed it in person.”

“I mean,” Lucy points out. “There’s that whole thing about being dead. It seems like, you know, the plumbing wouldn’t work.”

“We’re not _dead,”_ Flynn says, with such a stung expression that Lucy can tell this is evidently a sore spot for vampires. “We’re alive differently, many of us have died or were close to death when we were turned, but do I look like a corpse? Do I?”

“No,” Lucy says, laughing a little at his vehemence. “Sorry. Forgive my ignorance. I still don’t know much about the creature world or the Elizabethan era, apparently. So would it work either way? No matter which gender the vampire and/or witch was?”

“Obviously it would need to be a man and a woman,” Flynn says wryly. “Biology does still apply. I don’t have enough actual data on half-breeds, but yes, there are a handful of references to their existence. Then again, there are references to plenty of other mythological creatures, so that doesn’t prove anything.”

“Weren’t manticores also supposed to be mythical?” All this has reminded Lucy of one of their chief objectives. “Some kind of Persian sphinx, cobbled together from medieval authors mostly relying on Pliny the Elder’s _Naturalis Historia?_ But if the last one was killed in the sixteenth century, or in other words now, and the venom was used to poison your brother, that apparently means they’re real. How do we go about finding an antidote?”

“Manticores were rare, but they were real. Humans couldn’t get close enough to them to ever see one in the flesh, but creatures could. The same with unicorns, phoenixes, and a few others.” Flynn looks as if it’s safe to reach for his wine again, if they’ve stopped talking about sex. “There’s no human merchant in London that will happen to have that lying around, so we’ll need to make contact with creatures. As I said, Kit’s a daemon, and if we’re supposed to get in touch with Agnes Sampson, in Berwick, she might have some ideas. She’s also known as the Wise Wife of Keith, she has particular expertise in potions and herbs, which is part of what gets her accused. It’s a possibility, at least.”

Lucy supposes that this is as good an idea as any, and perhaps there is some sort of covert creature apothecary in London, well hidden, that she can find by tapping on bricks. They can hear the muffled noises of sawing, plastering, hammering, and scraping from overhead, as Parry and company are clearly working overtime trying to put together a suitable set of rooms for her. Once more, Lucy resists the urge to apologize for the inconvenience she’s causing, since Flynn was the one who decided on this half-baked story. Would it have been more or less suspicious to introduce her as his fiancée? Mistress? Random woman in trouble that he had to take home until he found somewhere else for her to go? Yes, any of those would still have invited suspicion upon her reputation, but not more than everyone already thinks about their quickie marriage, and Lucy isn’t planning to live in Tudor London long-term anyway, so it’s not like she has to worry about the consequences. Past Flynn is going to be in a pickle, that’s for sure, but the human brain has an amazing ability to ignore things that aren’t going to kill you immediately. It is, _como se dice_ , not her problem right now.

They finish supper, and Lucy asks if she can have a bath. She is feeling decidedly pungent after a week in the less-than-clean inn, and while she’s read things about how shampooing your hair every day is actually bad for it and the natural oil balances adjust after a period of not washing it, it’s currently pretty nasty. This means more work for the servants, but a large copper tub is hauled into the smaller solar, a screen is set up around it, and it is lined with a sheet. Kettles of water are heated in the kitchen, hauled up the stairs, and emptied into the tub until it’s relatively full. Everyone is dismissed except Meg, since Lucy has still not mastered the knack of getting out of these clothes by herself. She hopes that the total absence of a baby bump may convince Meg that she is not actually _enceinte,_ but she can’t take out her modern toiletries while she has an audience. Yet again, however, her hints that she has this under control seem to be flying over Meg’s head, since a lady would require help to wash, apparently. Finally, Lucy gives up. What the hell, she’s a strange woman already. “I have some things over there,” she says. “Could you fetch them for me, please?”

Meg goes and gets them, goggling at the L’Oréal shampoo and conditioner bottles and the Dove soap bar. “Are these from Paris, my lady?”

“Yes,” Lucy says. “They are a tincture for the hair. If you want to hand them over – ”

Meg is once more reluctant to do this, so Lucy tells her how to open them and allows Meg to shampoo her, leaning her head against the rim of the tub. It feels very nice. Meg’s hands are strong, she gives a good scalp rub, and carefully rinses out the suds when she’s done. Lucy steps dripping out of the tub, Meg wraps her in a towel, and they run into another problem when Meg spots Lucy’s pajamas. She squints, trying to read the shirt. “What is _Stanefyrd,_ my lady? If you’ll forgive me?”

“It’s a place,” Lucy says. “A school where I went. It’s fine, I promise,” she adds hastily, since Meg is regarding these ragged old things with great suspicion, clearly wondering why a lady is wearing them instead of a nightgown and cap. “As I said, I came here with quite little.”

After she has convinced Meg not to burn her pajamas, Lucy accepts a dressing gown, wraps it around herself, and goes upstairs to the lord’s bedchamber, where she will be sleeping tonight. She knocks rather timidly, and then at the sound of Flynn’s voice, enters.

She hasn’t seen his room yet, or anywhere that he’s spent a lot of time. Even his tower back in Sept-Tours was mostly bare, his possessions mostly moved to Oxford, and it was hard to make out anything that felt like home. The chamber is large, since it can function additionally as a private receiving room and dining room for important guests, with a draped table and chairs in one corner and the tall canopied bed in the other. Unlike the undersized item back at the inn, it is made to accommodate a six-foot-four man, and Flynn is probably very much looking forward to stretching his legs. There is a writing desk by the window, heaped with quills and parchments and half-finished letters, and the walls are hung with tapestries, as they are in Sept-Tours. A large hearth with a handsome wooden mantelpiece provides warmth, with the de Clermont coat of arms on the wall above, and there are books and swords and other miscellanea that clearly belong to Past Flynn, giving Lucy a frisson of unreality, as if she can see the two shimmering edges of time meeting in the middle. The air smells clean and sweet, scented with fresh herbs and flowers, and the floor is scattered with rushes, which are swept out and cleaned every day. Carpets are still very rare and extremely expensive, though Elizabethan England is deeply connected to the Ottoman, Persian, and Moroccan empires via trade, piracy, and diplomacy. Even Queen Elizabeth has rushes in her presence chamber, and they crackle under Lucy’s bare feet.

Flynn himself is seated at his desk, searching through the papers, apparently in case his past self left anything useful lying around. He sniffs the air. “You smell nice.”

“I couldn’t get Meg to leave long enough to wash in private,” Lucy says wryly. “Wealthy women really are used to a lot of coddling, aren’t they?”

“As you would see it, yes.” Flynn glances up. “New maids are always anxious to make sure they can’t be seen as slovenly or lazy. You’ll be able to negotiate what you want and expect, but you have to live as we do here. It is dishonorable for a noblewoman to be alone or underserved. It is dereliction on the part of a servant to do so. Even I, now that I am Lord Clairmont again, cannot be spotted wandering around on foot, alone. When I go out, I am attended. There are rules for servants about what time they rise and go to bed, fines for missing chores or household church services, orders for what days the tasks are done, and everybody is used to observing them. Meg may seem like she’s smothering you, but you’re the one who seems bizarre and possibly ungrateful to her.”

Lucy’s cheeks burn. This sounds like an implied reproach, when she has been trying so hard all day to avoid creating more work for everyone, with her modern liberal sensibilities that suspect this is all a system of unfair exploitation and she needs to avoid contributing to the historical oppression of women and the poor, blah blah blah. This is mostly wishful thinking anyway, but she turns sharply on her heel and goes to the bed, climbing in and burrowing under the covers. She knows that Flynn is right that they can’t live like modern people while they’re here, but at least _he_ has been here before. This is monumentally strange and different to her, he is her only point of reference or familiarity or person that she can talk about it with, and if he’s just going to be short with her for not immediately adjusting –

For his part, Flynn belatedly seems to realize ten minutes later that he has put his foot in his mouth. He looks up at her, huddled in a small angry ball under the quilts, and blinks. “Lucy? Are you – ”

“Fine,” Lucy says tightly. “Besides, we have a lot of work to do. Find anything?”

“I’ll see if I can send a messenger to Berwick and contact Agnes,” Flynn says. “There are also some booksellers that both of us can visit. They’re listed on the Ashmole fragment, and it would be worth a visit. Magical books aren’t common, but they circulate anyway, and right now, astrology and alchemy and other subjects are – as I am sure you know – all the rage.”

“Yes.” Lucy studies this professionally, after all. She sits there with her chin on her knees, watching Flynn work by candlelight, wondering if it is going to be like this for the rest of their time here, and possibly afterward. She meant it when she offered a sexless partnership, an intellectual union but not a physical one, and she still does. Flynn has tried so hard to respect her boundaries, even if in occasionally counterproductive fashion, and she is doing her best to return the favor. But it would be easier if she thought that was what he actually wanted. She knows in some way that he loves her, he loves her deeply, and that won’t change whether or not they ever properly make the beast with two backs. Yet when they’ve been together in other ways, she can _tell_ that he wants her, and indeed, their last hiccup was caused by him getting too into it and frightening himself. Lucy reminds herself that she’s going to be patient and wait as long as it takes, but she wants him, she wants him badly, and she doesn’t know whether to raise the subject again or just do as he is currently doing and act like it doesn’t exist. They obviously have a hundred other things to focus on, the marriage story is almost incidental, and it feels far too high-school to constantly fret about whether the guy she has a crush on likes her back. Plus the alchemical wedding, their faces on the page, the worries about prophecy and free will and all else, the condemnation by the Congregation that awaits them back in the present, the renewal of Maria de Clermont’s antipathy against witches, and the fact that they could never have an actual future. It is exhausting.

Lucy lies down on her side of the bed, and pulls the covers up over her head. She drifts for a while, drops under, wakes up when Flynn crawls in next to her, and lies in an uneasy doze, uncomfortably aware of his size and weight and presence and the ache between her legs. She is not trying to take care of it herself with him lying right there, but her throat is dry and her blood buzzes and surely he can hear the frantic racing of her heartbeat. She must be the only newly-married woman in the world who is slowly dying of sexual frustration.

Lucy practices some breathing exercises and thinks about deeply boring and unsexy subjects (university bureaucracy, tax filing, the DMV, literally any academic thing you have applied for and really want, hence destined for swift failure) until she finally falls asleep again. She is just in the middle of another weird William Shakespeare shoe dream when the bedroom door bangs open, she wakes up with a jerk thinking they might be attacked, and then for a wild moment, thinks she must have somehow timewalked them back in her sleep. She doesn’t know how or why, or what else would have had to happen, but she can think of no other reason why he could possibly be here.

Gabriel de Clermont bursts into the lord’s bedchamber without knocking. He is dressed in riding clothes: breeches, high boots, a white shirt unlaced at the collar, a slashed-silk jacket and half-buttoned doublet, half-cape and soft velvet hat, and he smells like salt and wind and Thames-murk. His black hair is cut short and coiffed, he sports a fashionable beard with a slight point, and from what Lucy can see of his chest, there is no slash or scar at all. (There is, however, a noticeable amount of bronze muscle.) He is tall and confident and casually commanding, with a rapier slung on one hip and a poniard on the other, and he swaggers like a victorious gladiator. “Garcia,” he says, speaking a rapid-fire, old-fashioned French that Lucy can only barely follow. “What the _hell_ are you doing?”

Flynn, who has woken up with a flash at the bang of the door, looks as if he’s been hit by lightning. He stares dumbly at Gabriel, unable to understand what the hell _he_ is doing here, and then squawks and snatches at the covers, an instant too late, as Gabriel grabs hold of them and whisks them off. Beneath, it reveals Flynn and Lucy, both in their modern pajamas, sleeping two feet apart from each other, as Gabriel regards it with an expression of triumph. “Yes,” he says, balling up the quilts and tossing them carelessly back on. “I thought so. Who exactly is this woman, darling, and what exactly is she doing here?”

Flynn is still too thunderstruck to utter anything except faint bleating noises. Lucy, for her part, can only stare. She has never seen Gabriel like this – even as it registers that of course, this isn’t Present Gabriel, the one who is still in enchanted sleep in Liechtenstein. This is Past Gabriel, who heard the news that his brother married a strange woman and brought her home, and apparently decided to make a direct investigation by barging into their bedchamber at seven in the morning. This is Gabriel before he lost his son, before the brothers were fatally estranged at the death of Flynn’s old lover Matej Radić, before everything else that happened, miles and miles from the stiff, serious, successful, shut-off wealthy businessman that Lucy met at Sept-Tours. He seems to be enjoying their total shock, leaning casually against the bedpost with arms crossed. “Well?” he says to his boggled brother. “Unless I am supposed to be scandalized by the strange trousers she is wearing, what?”

“Gabr – Gabriel,” Flynn manages at last, in a croak. The question of whether he was expecting to see him is clearly answered by the look on his face. “What are you – ?”

“What do you think? Sweet Kit had a very interesting tale to spin last night, and I thought it was best to be certain. You – ” Gabriel snaps his fingers at Lucy, who is still feeling as if she has been hit by a freight train – “what is your name, darling? What idiocy did Garcia visit upon you? I doubt greatly he has visited any other things. It is a bad habit of his. I have tried to remedy it without success.”

“I…” Lucy opens and shuts her mouth. He is dazzlingly beautiful at close range, he is taking up all the air and light and space in the room, and Flynn is still staring at him as if he’s seen a ghost – which in a way, he has. “My name is Lu – Lucy.”

 _“Enchant_ _é.”_ Gabriel takes her hand and kisses it lingeringly. There is a fresh sword-cut on his cheekbone, half-healed, and his eyes have tiny flecks of gold in the darkness. “I apologize for my brother. He is a dimwit. I cannot fault his taste with you, though.”

“Excuse me,” Flynn harrumphs. “I’m right here.”

“Oh, are you?” Gabriel arches a cutting eyebrow at him. He has barely stopped moving since his entrance, whirling like a dervish, and spins to the sideboard, pours himself a goblet of wine, and sprawls down on the bed between them, apparently with no notion whatsoever that it might be rude to burst in on the lord and lady before they have risen (and were, to say the least, not expecting him). “I have had _such_ a night, darling, truly,” he says to Flynn, whose mouth is still stuck open like a broken garage door. “Sweet Kit was in a sulk about meeting you with some wife the other day, I told him we all knew the Judgment would come before you were successful with a woman without my help, but he was insistent. I would have shagged it out of him, but he must insist on brooding. _Poets_. So then I visited Lady Pembroke, but her horrible husband just had to bestir himself to pay her one of his once-yearly intrusions, and I had to escape in haste. Lady Sussex was not at home, and Lady Montague at prayer. I have been to Hampton Court and back, darling, and now I find you with a woman in bed when I have not managed all night? Has it gone backward, the whole world, without me noticing?”

Gabriel has barely stopped throughout this entire impressive recital, except to sip his wine and talk faster, and Flynn may literally never regain the power of speech. Gabriel kicks off his boots, leans back on the pillows, and finally glances over at Lucy again. “He has not fucked you, has he?” he says apologetically. “We can arrange it later.”

“EXCUSE ME.” Shock or not, Flynn can’t miss that. He glares at his brother. “She is _my_ wife, remember?”

Gabriel waves an aristocratic, dismissive hand, jeweled rings flashing in the pale morning sunlight. “My darling, you are both a dreadful liar and profoundly unsatisfactory with women, we all know this. Trust me, I can tell. Do you think that will soothe Kit’s jealousy, if I should let it slip?”

“Why – ” Flynn sputters. “I thought you were the one sleeping with him. Why would he be jealous of – ”

Gabriel rolls his eyes at the ceiling in mute appeal. “I suspect,” he says, as if explaining a very simple concept to an exceptionally dense pupil, “that he views me as some sort of replacement for you, which – well, he is _very_ pretty, it is not a hardship. But his fuming over this new wench of yours ruined the mood last night full well, I must say. So if I should inform him it is a marriage in name only, in service of some other scheme – ”

“I – it is not, it’s – ” Flynn sounds like a broken carburetor. “It is neither your nor Kit Marlowe’s business what goes on in my bedchamber or with my own wife! So – ”

“Please.” Gabriel takes another sip. “Did _Maman_ and Papa even hear of this?”

That, despite the dramatic hurricane of Gabriel’s entrance thus far, clearly catches Flynn off guard the most. His face works as he looks away, and Lucy is reminded that in this time, in this place, his father Asher de Clermont, brutally tortured to death by the Nazis during World War II, is still alive. It does not seem to have occurred to Flynn at all that they might run into his family, as most things have managed not to. But his brother is now very definitely here, the news will get out swiftly to the rest of the family that Garcia has married (or otherwise become entangled with) a strange witch, and the domino effect will be swift. Lucy thinks just then of something that Gabriel said to her in the present, that he had the oddest feeling that he had met her before, knew her from somewhere. Is this why? Does she have to make him forget before they return to the present, or –

“It all happened very quickly,” Flynn says, after a long pause. “I have not told our parents.”

“Perhaps you should,” Gabriel remarks pointedly. “I daresay none of us would have wagered on you being the first of us to wed – but then, I know there is some other fable going on here, Garcia. Keep your secrets if you must, but at least service the poor woman properly or let me do it.” He turns to Lucy. “I can take care of you, sweetheart. It is a civic service I provide to all the neglected noble wives of London. The husbands would be much less cross if they simply joined in.”

Lucy discovers that her mouth is also open, and shuts it. While the invitation to have an authentic romp in the sheets with a very, very hot vampire Casanova is, admittedly, tempting, she obviously isn’t going to agree to it right in front of Flynn’s face. She is also rather impressed at the scale of Gabriel’s sex life, and thinks that he’s damn lucky to be immortal if he’s going to be caught in bed with various wealthy women (and by the sound of it, men). As the case of Henry VIII’s wives proves, adultery is no laughing matter, can get even queens executed, and Lucy wonders if Gabriel’s lovers will be so lucky to escape punishment and beating from their husbands if their extramarital escapades are discovered. What might be a fun and harmless occupation for him could be genuinely dangerous for them, since misogyny and double standards, take a shot. But she doesn’t think this is the time to start scolding Gabriel about this, and she more or less politely manages, “Thank you, but no.”

Gabriel looks impressed and rather intrigued, as he probably is not used to being turned down, and raises his goblet in apparent salute to her fidelity. “As you wish, pet. Though should my brother continue to be deeply unsatisfactory, the offer stands.”

Flynn harrumphs again, and Gabriel looks at him, clearly taking inordinate pleasure in yanking him by the ear (or, you know, other things). “As for you, darling,” he goes on, “you have that rather wild look in your eye that means at least _some_ of your present stupidity can be ameliorated. How long since you have fed?”

Flynn blinks. “I – ”

“Oh, hush.” Gabriel reaches over Lucy to put his goblet down on the sideboard, then shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it on the floor. He is utterly without any sense of shame (or, one might remark, concept of personal space). “Come here.”

Flynn remains boggled – but there’s something else on his face as well, the awareness that it has been centuries since Gabriel has casually offered this, remotely trusted him to bite his neck or even be close to him. He struggles to control his expression, as there is no reason for his past self to react so emotionally to what is clearly a routine part of their lives, and after a moment, he shakes himself, brings out his fangs, and leans forward, carefully sinking them into the side of Gabriel’s majestic throat. As far as Lucy knows, he hasn’t fed since they arrived, and with all the stress and disruption that they have been under, it can’t hurt. She wonders if she should have offered – she’d be happy to do it, for several reasons – and has to fight an odd, indefinable sense of hurt. Does Flynn think she’s too fragile, it could lead too quickly to other dangerous places, or – or what?

Flynn feeds for a few moments, as Gabriel closes his eyes like a lazy, spoiled cat; you can practically see the cream dripping off his whiskers. Flynn starts to pull back, but Gabriel claps a hand on his head and keeps him there a minute longer, then finally relinquishes him. “Whatever this fashion has become for starving yourself, it is unnecessary,” he says critically. “You are hungry. I can tell.”

Flynn opens his mouth, clearly decides not to answer that, and wipes it with the back of his hand instead. He shoots a furtive, guilty look at Lucy, and gives Gabriel another look under his eyelashes that is hurt and guilty and angry and upset and worried all at once, at this living embodiment of how close they used to be and how much they have lost. But Gabriel’s future self is lying in stasis because he threw himself in front of a poisoned dagger to save Flynn, that one moment of reconciliation they had before everything went to hell, and this present Gabriel, utterly unaware of the tragedy to come, is almost overwhelming. Finally Flynn says hoarsely, “I’ll be all right now. Thank you.”

Gabriel glances at him with a strange expression. Thus far, he has been mercilessly teasing Flynn and taking pleasure in watching him squirm, but there is genuine concern and deep love in it, the knowledge that this is all very out of character for Garcia and that there must be something going on, something he has not felt fit to confide to any of them. “Darling,” he says, somewhat softer. “What is all this about? Truly?”

“I – nothing.” It again takes Flynn a visible effort to speak. “We just – we have something we need to do, and – ”

He is getting nowhere on the explanations, Lucy hopes that Gabriel doesn’t take it into his head that she must have enchanted Garcia, and wonders if he already knows she’s a witch, or that should also be explicitly addressed. Then there’s a knock on the door, Lucy thinks it must be the servants (though perhaps they’re used to Gabriel just sweeping in without so much as a by-your-leave) and both Gabriel and Flynn look up. A young man’s voice calls, “Uncle Garcia? Has Papa run in here again? I am sorry, I tried to catch him.”

At that, Flynn turns to ice from head to toe. No matter how much Gabriel’s appearance confounded him, this appears to have utterly floored him, and Lucy is briefly at a loss to think who it can possibly be – until the door opens, and she understands.

Christian de Clermont, as it has to be, looks as if he is in his early twenties, as Gabriel said that he was a Carolingian soldier, badly wounded, when the de Clermont brothers found him and Gabriel turned him, sired him as his son, to save his life. It was the moment when Garcia first came back to himself after centuries of rage and vengeance over the death of his human family, and when Gabriel and Garcia became inseparable companions and brothers-in-arms. Christian’s death as a result of the Matej tragedy was thus what tore them apart, and as Flynn stares at the nephew he has not seen in two hundred and fifty years, the shock and grief and love on his face is raw and naked as an exposed nerve. He looks down, trying to hide it, and can’t get words out. To the bedspread, he says, “I – good morrow.”

Christian, for his part, does not appear to notice this. He is tall and fair, with long dark-gold hair and wide blue eyes, a practically perfect Renaissance angel in the flesh. He shoots a reprimanding look at Gabriel. “Papa, you really are very impolite.”

“What are you – ?” Gabriel jumps off the bed, grabs his jacket, and otherwise hastens to make himself look more respectable. He strides over to his son, slings an arm around his shoulder, and kisses his hair. “What are you doing here? I thought I left you back in Essex.”

“I suspected,” Christian informs him, with the tone of someone who is resignedly used to his father’s shenanigans, “that there had to be a reason you left in such haste. I thought this would be the best place to find you, and – lo and behold.”

He glances over apologetically at his uncle – then spots Lucy, and his jaw drops. “There’s a lady!” he blurts out, looking outraged, as if either Gabriel or Flynn might have overlooked this fact and failed to pay her proper courtesies. “There’s a – ”

“Yes, my love, we have seen her,” Gabriel says, with another slight eye-roll. “That is – well, your uncle claims she is his wife, but I shall fart a madrigal and juggle eight flaming clubs before the earl of Arundel in the Tower before I – ”

Christian pays no attention. He rushes over, takes Lucy’s hand, and doffs his hat, kneeling before her. “My name is Christian de Clermont, my lady,” he informs her earnestly. “I am Lord Gabriel’s son. Are you my aunt now?”

“I – ” Lucy bites her cheek. He really is very adorable (and clearly did not get those manners from anyone else in the family). “I… suppose? I’m Lucy, but – ”

“Shall I address you as Aunt Lucy, or as Lady Clairmont?” Christian asks, apparently in desperate concern that he not be too hot or too cold, but ala Goldilocks, just right. “When did you marry my uncle?”

“You can – just Lucy is fine, really. We – just after Easter.”

“That is wonderful.” Christian beams. “I have long felt Uncle Garcia was of a greatly solitary nature, and too long alone. Aunt Lucy, then?”

“If you insist.” Lucy can’t help smiling at him, as he plants a kiss to the back of her hand, waits, and at her gracious nod, gets to her feet. “Did you say you came from Essex?”

“We did, aye.” Christian is clearly trying very hard not to look at her strange clothes or make any comment on them. “Our family has the New Lodge there, our country residence. This one is oft called the Old Lodge, to separate the two. Do you – ” He stops, suddenly looking horrified. “Aunt Lucy, you do know that we are – that Uncle Garcia is…”

“What?” Despite herself, Lucy’s stomach lurches. She wonders if there is some horrifying secret they have forgotten to tell her, some other dark mystery about Flynn’s life in Tudor London that seems to have escaped him. “Know what?”

Christian looks furtively from side to side. _“Vampires?”_

Both Gabriel and Flynn are overcome with sudden coughing fits at that, and Lucy glares at them; at least _someone_ is trying to see if she is fitting into this new world. “Seeing as she just saw your uncle feed on me,” Gabriel says to his son, “I think that particular aspect of our existence is not in any doubt, no.”

“Oh.” Christian looks heartily relieved, then glances back at Lucy, frowning. “You are – but you are a witch. It is not – ”

At that, he seems to decide that he is being too nosy, and shuts his mouth like a trap. “It is not my business, Aunt Lucy. I am sorry that Papa is such a – well, that he is Papa. By the by, I was woken this morning with a man from Lord Pembroke banging on the door. _What_ did you do now?”

“Oh, fuck.” Gabriel sighs. “I’ll have to go eat him. I – no, only joking, my love, only joking,” he says quickly, at the aghast look on Christian’s face. “But nonetheless, it seems to use some sorting out and modification of memory. Darling, please do excuse me, and have a _wondrous_ time with your wife. I shall see you anon.”

With that, he kisses Flynn, kisses Lucy, kisses Christian, and shows himself out. Everyone is left in stunned silence for several moments, which seems to be the natural corollary of extended exposure to Gabriel de Clermont, Pansexual Elizabethan Drama Trash Emperor. Then Christian, valiantly rallying for a topic of polite conversation, turns to Lucy. “Have you been in London long?”

“Not long.” Lucy is aware that Flynn is still having trouble even looking at Christian, and this may lead to more questions. “Why don’t you – so your uncle and I can – ”

“Oh.” Christian looks blank, and then it appears to dawn on him. _“Oh,”_ he says, attempting to sound sage. He nods and taps his nose. “Aye, certes. So you can… yes, I see.”

With that, he bows to them both and follows his father speedily out the door, as Lucy (and Flynn) are still at an entire and enduring loss for words. Lucy actually meant “get dressed without more de Clermont family members bombing in here,” but Christian, bless his heart, thinks that they are newlywed nymphomaniacs and can’t keep their hands off each other. Finally Lucy manages, “You didn’t warn me that we might run into them.”

“They weren’t in London last time, I didn’t – ” Flynn stops, appears to grudgingly concede that hearing that he has married a strange witch overnight just _might_ do the trick, and swears under his breath. “I forgot that Gabriel was sleeping with Kit Marlowe.”

Lucy wants to ask if there was anyone Gabriel _wasn’t_ sleeping with, but you know what, good for him. At least one of the de Clermont brothers is making full use of his vampiric magnetism, sexual appeal, and overall functionality in this arena. “What do we do now? Gabriel said something about making someone forget – can we do that? Should we do that? Is it going to mess things up if he knows us in the future?”

“Vampires can sometimes induce humans to forget things, yes,” Flynn says. “Make them suggestible, docile. A bit like hypnotism. It would be harder to do with another vampire. And now they’re – Christian. . .”

He trails off, rubbing both hands over his face and looking wrecked. Lucy can guess that his guilt at seeing father and son together, happy and loving, is almost overwhelming. Elizabethan parenting prizes strict respect and discipline, teaching children their place in the household and society, and it is uncontroversial wisdom that you should beat them, in home and at school, to ensure their moral development and correct guidance. Indeed, the father of the family has general license to birch his wife, his servants, and his children whenever he pleases, and this makes him a conscientious patriarch, rather than a domestic abuser. It is expected, of course, that he will not do so violently or immoderately, and only when necessary to correct a fault, but it’s still a pretty repugnant system to modern sensibilities. Parents do love their children, because they’re human, but they’re taught to express it in much more constrained and formal ways.  Gabriel, however, is clearly such a loving and indulgent father that he does not hold with any of that nonsense, and Christian is just as clearly the only person for whom he will attempt to be respectable and serious. It is all too evident that when his son died – was murdered, by the vampire hunters that Matej Radić tipped off where to find him – all the joy went out of Gabriel’s life, and he has never recovered. Lucy knew this on an intellectual level, but seeing it play out is painful.

“I don’t want to get him mixed up in this,” Flynn says, after another pause. “Though I may have trouble keeping him out. If Gabriel does tell our parents – ”

Again, he stops. It is clear that his desire to keep his family from getting too contorted in their timelines, and away from the delicate mess that is meddling in the past for magical reasons, is at war with his equal desire, no matter how unwise, to see them again. In the present, Asher, Gabriel, and Christian are all dead, or as good as, and even before that, his relationship with his brother was nonexistent. Here is a Gabriel who loves him and isn’t angry at him, a sweet nephew who has been the only person to accept the marriage story without turning a hair, and a living father. Flynn might know intellectually that it’s wise to stay away from them, but Lucy can’t blame that human urge (perhaps ironically, for a vampire) that wants otherwise. Everyone wishes they could go back to the good old days, to a time before all their worst mistakes, and in some ways, Flynn has. It must almost be like a dream, and no matter what, he cannot bring himself to want to wake all the way up.

“I’ll work something out,” Flynn says. “Maybe I can send Christian to Scotland to fetch Agnes Sampson. It would be easier to explain it to him than to one of the servants, and it would keep him out of any trouble elsewhere. God, I forgot how much I – ”

Once again, he can’t finish his sentence, still shaken. They look at each other, Lucy wonders if they are ever going to address the fact that Gabriel just blithely proposed that she could have a casual affair with him because she is so clearly not getting laid elsewhere, and once more decides that that is not their most pressing concern. Flynn seemed defensive when Gabriel mentioned it, but he doesn’t have a lot of room to talk when he’s not _doing_ anything about it. They are the world’s most unconvincing married couple to everyone except Christian, and that could get them into trouble, real trouble, not just Lucy’s private frustrations. If Flynn was going to choose this as a cover story, he could at least commit to acting like it, but this, this weird, butchered halfway-between state that’s not one thing or another, is not fitting the –

Lucy doesn’t know if she’s going to insist or not, because for the third time that morning, although only the second with a knock, they are interrupted. “My lord?” It’s Parry, and by the tone of his voice, it’s serious. “There is a letter for you. From the palace, my lord.”

Flynn swears under his breath, and Lucy’s stomach performs an unpleasant flip. If Queen Elizabeth has also heard that Lord Clairmont has engaged in matrimonial irregularity with a woman not personally approved of beforehand, that is – as noted – seriously bad. It meant the Tower of London for Walter Raleigh and his wife, and any detainment will further cut into their precious six months (much as it might be felt that it could only do Flynn some good) and take considerable time and effort to extricate them. Lucy is trying hard not to completely panic as Flynn swears again, strides to the door, opens it, and whisks the letter from the steward. He breaks the wax seal, reads it, and crumples it in his fist. Then he mutters, “Fuck.”

“What?” Lucy feels as if this morning has already done more than enough, and can stop any time it wants. “What is it now?”

“We are,” Flynn says, carefully offhand, “summoned to appear before the royal presence at Whitehall, at nine o’clock tomorrow. It seems, indeed, that Her Majesty wants a word.”


	3. Much Ado About Nothing

Flynn does not get much done for the rest of the day. The looming terror of the audience with the Queen tomorrow overshadows his concentration, and he is still too rattled by the encounters of the morning. Intellectually, he should have remembered that the de Clermonts do own that hunting lodge in Essex, that Gabriel was often in and out of London (in and out of London indeed) and there was a chance of meeting him here, but somehow it never connected to the possibility of actually doing so. Seeing Gabriel as he used to be in his unapologetic peacock playboy splendor, unfathomably rich and handsome and incapable of giving a single shit, but so open and light and happy… it impresses on Flynn ever more sharply how much of a shell of his former self Gabriel is these days. Poisoned and unconscious and only a few degrees from dead, but even before that, there was so little left of his vibrant and voluminous and vivid soul, corroded by grief and guilt and rage. It almost seems like murder.

That is not even going into the shock that it was to see Christian again. Flynn might have expected to see Gabriel, if he had thought about it, but Christian has been gone for so long and so unbearably that having his absence suddenly filled again was literally unthinkable. At least Gabriel has been physically present, if emotionally and mentally absent, but Christian… God, he’s just the same. Of course he is. It’s another one hundred and seventy-two years until he’s murdered, and to the end, he was always like this. Flynn’s heart twists like a fist every time he replays it. Christian is entirely innocent of the nuance of politics and the plausibility of feeble cover stories and anything else (you could argue that was the flaw that cost him his life, but at least Christian’s black-and-white view of the world allowed for endless kindness and not moral hypocrisy). He just wanted to rush to wish his uncle and his new aunt well. And to sit there and know what’s going to happen to him, to him and his loving, laughing father… Flynn almost wants to shout a warning, to tell them somehow, but how on earth could he do that? He can’t. And yet, he would give anything at all if he could.

Flynn sifts aimlessly through the papers and books on his desk, not really expecting to find anything relevant. He needs to make contact with the School of Night, aside from just an apparently jealous and brooding Christopher Marlowe, and find out what they’ve been working on, without sounding as if he has suddenly forgotten the past several months. He is also interrupted periodically by Robert Parry and the servants, who have to ensure that the installation of Lucy’s new quarters and possessions is proceeding to his approval, and Flynn, trying to forestall further disruption to his already tenuous concentration, barks at one of the younger grooms until he scuttles out, close to tears. Once he’s gone, Flynn sinks back in his chair and curses to himself. No matter what he has said to Lucy about respecting the customs of the time, he does not need to fall into _all_ his old bad habits. Which, it seems, he has made a damn good start at doing.

Having assured himself of being left alone for at least a few hours, Flynn makes questionable use of it at best, as he keeps zoning out instead of working. He finally gives up in disgust around three o’clock, gets up, and goes out to the main house, where the servants all look somewhat nervous that he has returned to shout at them for not magically conjuring Lucy’s room from the air. “My lord,” Parry says. “We are doing the utmost that we – ”

“Aye, I am sure it is the best that can be achieved,” Flynn says gruffly. “It was a great surprise to thee, I know. Thou hast my apologies for the distemper.”

The cadences of Elizabethan English have come back fairly easily to his tongue, even if nothing else has, and the servants are surprised enough to receive even this apology, as Flynn supposes that his past self was not much in the habit of it. Surely they must notice that something is different about him, aside from just the inexplicable wife? Not as if it would ever occur to them that this is not their master, but a time-traveling future self, returned in an attempt to uncover a dangerous magical manuscript and save the man who was just barging in here earlier, very much alive. Parry knows that he is a vampire, but most of the others don’t. And while Flynn trusts them, more or less, there is still the fact that whispers of too much unnaturalness could put him, Lucy, and the rest of the de Clermonts in danger. As a (former, to all intents and purposes) French Catholic, he already has two strikes to his name. If he acts _too_ strange, or Lucy does, the risk is not insignificant.

Finally deciding wearily that if need be, he will follow Gabriel’s strategy and either eat or modify the memory of anyone who might get overly suspicious, Flynn goes into the solar to see Lucy, who is working her way through a stack of books from his library. This is not in itself suspicious, as all noblewomen are literate, even if there are only, at best, basic provisions for the general public education of girls. Flynn does not want to feel as if he is constantly on guard in his own home, monitoring every tiny aspect of his behavior, but then, he has never had to disguise said time-traveling future self before. Should he dismiss all the servants here and bring in new ones from Sept-Tours? But going home would bring more of his family into this, and he would have to come up with some explanation for replacing his entire household at the drop of a hat. If his reported marriage to Lucy is already raising eyebrows, that would only fan the flames.

“Er,” Flynn says, clearing his throat, and aware that he has seemed somewhat too cavalier to this question before. “Are you – settling in, then?”

Lucy glances up, marking her place in the book and setting it aside. “I suppose, but I just… tomorrow. We’re not _actually_ going to get thrown in the Tower, are we?”

It’s unsurprising that this is also hanging over her concentration, though she is managing to deal with it far more gracefully than him. Flynn feels a prickle of shame; she’s right that he has expected a lot from her with this, an experience that very few (if any at all) other humans have ever been asked to face. Lucy is brave, and she’s doing her best, and he hasn’t exactly made it easy. “I don’t think so,” he says, as stoutly as he can. “Elizabeth can be temperamental, but I can talk her around. If we were actually going to be arrested, she would have sent yeomen to seize us, rather than a messenger ordering us to an audience tomorrow. This at least gives a chance to plan what we’re going to say to her.”

“What _are_ we going to say to her?” Lucy points out. “We can hardly tell her the truth. And nobody seems to believe that we’re married. Your brother was offering to sleep with me this morning because of it.”

Flynn is aware of an ancestral heat climbing in his chest; he was _trying_ not to think about that, thank you very much. “Gabriel offers to sleep with everyone,” he says. “I think it’s his version of a handshake. We shouldn’t read too much into it.”

He can sense that Lucy might not be entirely buying this, but she decides not to push. “So if everyone we’ve told thus far hasn’t believed us,” she says instead, “how exactly are we going to convince the Queen? Is it too late to completely scrap the story, say you were lying to protect me, or anything else that might play better? I mean, if this is just – ”

“Do you not want to be thought of as my wife?” Flynn wonders if that’s what she’s implying, even though it was his instinct to extend her that protection, that title, that safeguard that she would not have as a nameless mistress plucked from some distant predicament and taken altruistically into his house. Lucy doesn’t understand how vulnerable she would be without the armor of Lady Clairmont. In 1563, a statute was passed authorizing local parish authorities to conscript unmarried women between twelve and forty to do unpaid labor of any sort, in the name of keeping them from mischief. “I don’t think that’s – ”

“Of course that’s not what I meant.” Lucy looks hurt, for some reason. “But if we’re creating a thousand complications with the marriage story and it will make people even more suspicious, maybe it would be smarter to – ”

“No,” Flynn interrupts. “You’re still thinking about this like a modern person, feeling that you would have more options and be safer if you were single. That is just not the case here. An unmarried, poor, foreign woman – you already saw how that rat in St. Paul’s talked to you when that’s who he thought you were. And there are witch hunts raging across Europe right now. The Trier tribunals in Germany have been going for almost a decade, the Chelmsford witches in Essex were accused and executed in 1566, we both know about Berwick this December, and you would be in danger. You _are_ in danger. As my wife, nobody short of the Queen herself can take you out of this house or lawfully do anything to you. Whereas if you were just a strange woman living here, you could either indict me by association or be subject to the charges any local magistrate or overzealous preacher wanted to lay on you. I could protest about my household being violated, but legally, I would have no power to stop them. I _would_ stop them, somehow. You can have my word on that. But it would make what we need to do close to impossible, and I don’t think either of us want that.”

Lucy stares at him. There’s a pause, then she says, “All right, all right. You didn’t have to talk me into it, but you – you just never explained that before, and – ”

“Well, I did now.” Flynn remembers that he’s supposed to be more understanding, and winces. “Sorry. I know I didn’t.”

They look at each other, until Lucy gets to her feet, comes over, and – almost hesitantly, clearly expecting him to pull away – puts her hands on his arms. He reaches up to take hers in turn, holding her by the forearms, and they stand there without speaking. Then she says, “Gabriel mentioned this morning that you were hungry. You know you can – ”

“Ah.” Flynn hasn’t trusted himself to ask her for another feed, and it felt disloyal to search out anyone else. He isn’t sure what he would have done if Gabriel hadn’t turned up, but never mind that. “I – I had enough from him, I’m all right now.”

Lucy eyes him up and down. She can clearly sense the evasion, the feeling that since landing in London, no matter the need to rely on each other more than ever, they are nonetheless becoming increasingly estranged. Flynn knows this is partly – all right, largely – his fault, that after that brief moment of losing control that night at Denise and Michelle’s, he has been afraid to touch her at all or take the initiative in anything whatsoever. It’s not that he thinks he would _break_ Lucy, exactly. He knows that she’s a witch and a brave woman and his equal in every other way you care to name. But he could still _hurt_ her, even inadvertently, and he has been so alone for so long that it might all come rushing out of him like a broken dam. He would be irresponsible if he disregarded the risk, the simple fact of him being so much larger and stronger and more violent than her, and while it’s not an optimum solution, it has felt easier just to put it off. They’ve both agreed that Ashmole 782 and saving Gabriel are their top priorities, and this is in no sense of the word a relaxing honeymoon. He’s not opposed to going down on her a few more times, if necessary, but the rest of it –

Lucy’s hands move along his arms, her face abstracted and troubled, eyes downcast. She does not seem happy, at least, and Flynn tries to think how to comfort her. He ducks his head and awkwardly kisses her forehead, even as she tips her mouth up in hopes of a proper one. Her nose knocks into the underside of his chin, and he pulls back, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

Lucy eyes him with an expression that says she is picturing in loving detail not how to shag him, but how to strangle him. “Garcia,” she starts. “Can you at least – I agree that it’s wise to have me be your wife, but in that case, shouldn’t you act like – ”

She seems to be fighting the words, braced for rejection, for inadequacy, for not deserving what she has screwed up the courage to ask for. “I know you have… issues about this,” she says, which even Flynn has to admit is a nice way to put it. “I want to respect that. I’m not asking for it to be the Love Boat every night. But I am so lonely here. I know _nobody._ It is constantly different and strange and harder in every way than everything I am used to. I worry all the time about everything we need to do, how little time we have to do it, and failing everyone who is depending on us back home. You promised that we would be a team, that we would face this and figure it out together, and yet you have barely even _looked_ at me in the week since we got here. I just… I can’t do this alone.”

Flynn looks down at her guiltily. He knows that even by the unexacting standards of the time, he has not been a satisfactory husband, and the image this morning of Gabriel offering her a no-strings-attached affair, sexual gratification in place of that which she is not getting elsewhere, spurs him to say, “All right. I’ll try to be better. If we’re not thrown into the Tower of London tomorrow, I’ll see what I can do, eh?”

“All right.” Lucy’s hands close convulsively on his arms, and Flynn can sense that despite her brave façade, the good sport she has gamely been about all of this, she is scared. Not necessarily of facing the Queen, although that cannot fail to be intimidating, but of everything she said before – and even more than all that, of losing him, one way or another. He’s right that without him, she would be very vulnerable here, and while she could theoretically timewalk herself back to the present and safety, she would feel obliged to stay and see the mission through to the end, or die trying. “I just need you,” she says, half under her breath, as if she hasn’t meant to. “I need us. I don’t know what else that means, I still don’t, but I do.”

Flynn lets out a breath and nods. He leans down to kiss her again, this time properly, and cups her face in his hand, stroking her cheekbone, until he can feel some of the tension bleed out of her. They get through supper that night without incident, possibly because they need to save their wits for the forthcoming audience tomorrow, and go to bed early.

Flynn doesn’t sleep at all that night, rehearsing a variety of potential arguments and tacks to take, and they both rise before sunup. It’s only a few minutes by carriage to Whitehall – and indeed, Elizabeth returning to her official seat, rather than receiving them in the comparative informality of Greenwich, means that she wishes to impress her displeasure quite firmly – but the protocol of a full court visit requires all the bells and whistles. Flynn has to wear the stuffed, slashed-silk doublet, breeches, hose, cloak, furs, hat, and shoes (fortunately, codpieces are now out of fashion) and for Lucy, that means corset, farthingale, petticoats, gown, jewels, ruff, and a full face of makeup. She manages to avoid the lead-based white powder that gives a noble lady a fashionably pale complexion, since she is already pale enough (and also, _lead_ ), but she still has to have her hair teased back from her forehead in a high bouffant, eyebrows plucked, face rouged, lips painted red, and a false beauty mark added to her cheek. Clearly out of respect for Meg’s hard work, she waits until her maid has left the room. Then she says, “Oh my god. I look like a garish wedding cake.”

“Not really the era for natural beauty, no,” Flynn acknowledges. “Don’t worry, I think you – that is, you look good.”

Lucy gives him a wry look as if to say that she appreciates him being sweet, but she is still scrubbing all this muck off the instant they get home (assuming that they do). She has to hold Flynn’s arm for balance as she slides on her heeled shoes, takes a few unsteady steps like a ship under full sail, and says despairingly, “If I don’t literally fall on my ass in front of the Queen of England, it’s going to be a miracle.”

“Hold onto me,” Flynn says, as they make their way downstairs, where Parry has their cloaks waiting and Karl has driven up in the coach. Karl, the head groom, is a bit of an unknown commodity. He has worked for Flynn (well, his past self) for four years or so, and always done a good job, but he is definitely what the tracts about household management have in mind when they describe an insolent servant. He knows just enough about Flynn’s true nature to be dangerous if he put his mind to it, but his loyalty is commanded by money, and so far, Flynn has been able to pay him sufficiently to avoid any worries about it. Karl, however, has been patently unimpressed by the disruption engendered by Lucy’s sudden arrival in the household, also doesn’t seem to believe the marriage story, and has apparently seen nothing to sway him from the conviction that Flynn has had a considerable and hopefully only temporary burst of insanity. Flynn thinks grimly that he might need to ask Gabriel about that bamboozling thing after all, but he would really prefer to avoid it if he can.

Flynn hands Lucy up into the coach and climbs in after her, as the other groom shuts the door and climbs up next to Karl. The coach is wooden, heavy and unwieldy, and it creaks and jolts through the mud as it rolls off; there are certainly no shocks or suspensions. The windows are made of ashy green lime-glass, and there isn’t much to see through them anyway, though they can hear the morning rush. Lucy sits ramrod-straight, hands twisted in her lap, and Flynn can taste her anxiety. He reaches out and takes hold of her hand, pulling her fingers out of their tangle and flattening them against his palm. “It’s going to be all right,” he says. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Lucy manages a weak smile, and they remain holding hands as the coach jolts up the grand drive. It is barely eight o’clock, and their audience was requested for nine, but royalty is not known for punctilious timekeeping, and either way, he did not want to be caught off-guard by a last-minute change. Besides, half the reason you go to court is to wait around in drawing rooms at the monarch’s pleasure, and perhaps if they can demonstrate that they are genuinely penitent and taking it seriously, Elizabeth will be more inclined to mercy. Flynn is a very valuable spy for her (especially after Walsingham’s death) and has worked the sort of missions that would defeat one human man, or anyone of lesser abilities. She can be possessive and petulant, but she’s too shrewd to throw that advantage away on a whim.

They reach the main courtyard of Whitehall a few moments later, and the carriage groans to a halt. The palace is huge and splendid – it is the largest in Europe at this point, and will not be outstripped until the construction of Versailles in the seventeenth century. It is more like a small town than one building, built in several different architectural styles over decades, and Henry VIII spent lavishly on its entertainment and luxury. It’s not quite at the height of its Stuart sprawl and opulence, but it is still more than enough to overawe, and Flynn glances up at the royal standard over the gatehouse as the grooms open the door and he hands Lucy down. Yeomen in royal livery are waiting, and Flynn takes Lucy’s arm as they move forward to be received. “Lord Clairmont, my lady. This way, prithee.”

They follow the yeomen up the steps, through the door, and inside. Flynn hears Lucy muffle a small sound of delight; even with the undesirable circumstances of their visit, this is a building that does not exist at all in the present day, and she can’t help a historian’s gratification at getting to see it. They pass windows diamonded in colored glass, rich tapestries and expensive paintings, coats of arms and fancy furniture, doors into other quarters of the palace, and finally draw to a halt in an expansive chamber, where they are told to wait. For how long, one can never be quite sure. Elizabeth can keep them hanging well past nine o’clock if she really wants to make a point, and they can’t exactly go anywhere before she does. Once the yeomen have bowed themselves out, Flynn hesitates, then sinks down on a delicate divan, which creaks ominously beneath him. Feeling as if it might be a bad idea to break the furniture, he stands up again at once.

Lucy looks as if she wants to pace, but isn’t sure if another servant will burst in and tell her off. She sits down instead, clearly trying to wrap her head around the prospect of imminently meeting Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, the woman who gives her name to the entire era; it’s clear that Lucy is just as worried about disappointing her as she is about actual punishment. Flynn glances at her, trying to think of something helpful to say, but he’s also drawing a blank. This is definitely not how he wanted to announce his return.

At last, as the finely wrought clock on the mantel reads half-past, they hear movement in the antechamber, and Lucy leaps to her feet so fast that she almost tears her dress. A pair of Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber march in, open the doors, and announce, “Elizabeth, by the Grace of God Queen of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.! All hail!”

Flynn immediately sweeps off his hat and sinks to both knees, as Lucy, clearly struggling to recall all that curtsy practice back at the inn, follows suit. They remain frozen in such obeisant fashion, not daring to look up, as a richly gilded train sweeps into sight. “Lord and Lady Clairmont, Your Majesty,” the yeoman says. “At your pleasure.”

“Gramercy.” The Queen of England does not even need to lift a jeweled finger; the gentlemen retreat as speedily as well-oiled clockwork, closing the doors behind her. There is an increasingly strained silence, as Flynn has still not yet dared to look up. Then she says at last, “Good morrow, Sir Garcia.”

Since this is a signal to rise, Flynn gets to his feet and raises his eyes to her face. Elizabeth Tudor is presently fifty-seven years old, and has managed her public image though a strategic series of portraits, emphasizing her virginity and sovereignty, now that the decades of marriage suits from the princes of Europe are finally done with and it is clear that she will never marry nor have an heir of her body. She is tall, elegant, and red-haired, Henry VIII’s daughter, but she was left scarred by a bout of smallpox in 1562 and has relied increasingly on wigs and cosmetics and other contrivances to disguise her ungraceful aging. Her excessive fondness for sweets and mistrust of dentists has left her teeth in very poor shape, so that foreign ambassadors sometimes have difficulty understanding her if she speaks too quickly. She is clever, stubborn, pragmatic, and prone to temper, but not immune to flattery, and when she offers him a powdered hand, Flynn bends especially deep to kiss it. “Your Majesty looks most lovely this morning,” he says. “It is greatly meet to see you again.”

“And less meet to see thee, in such deceitful fashion?” Elizabeth’s plucked eyebrows raise sharply across her high forehead. She has still made no note or acknowledgement of Lucy; all is not forgiven, the honor of the royal presence will not be immediately extended, and Lucy, clearly sensing this, stays back. “What is this tale I have of thee, my lord? A marriage contracted without mine own word and warrant, and to a woman I have neither met nor once heard of? Dost thou wish especially to vex me, Sir Garcia?”

“Nay, Your Majesty, of course not,” Flynn says humbly. “The manner of its making – ”

“I give not a fig for the manner of its _making.”_ Even under the heavy rouge, Elizabeth’s cheeks are flushed, her eyes snapping with anger. “Thou hast caused another scandal, as if we do not have enough with that absurd brother of thine! I have half the husbands in London complaining to me of his rumored indecent liberties with their wives, my lord. If I am not to suffer the greatest regrets for welcoming thy family to my court and favor, I demand that you inform Lord Gabriel to return himself to Essex, and there remain in prudent oblivion.”

 _Prudent oblivion_ might be a state of being in which Gabriel de Clermont has never existed in his entire multi-millennial life, and Flynn cannot help but be exasperated over the expectation that he is additionally bound to answer for Gabriel’s misadventures. He isn’t sure whether to expend limited political capital on trying to defend Gabriel, when he needs to keep himself and Lucy out of trouble. “I shall do that, Your Majesty,” he promises. Gabriel might laugh in his face, but at least he will have kept his word. “Most promptly.”

Elizabeth harrumphs. Her thin mouth vanishes into a moue of disapproval, and Flynn has the sense that he is making her more angry, rather than less. She turns sharply on her heel, obliging him to trot to keep up with her, as they proceed down the length of the chamber together. Elizabeth likes to have younger, handsome men to fawn upon her, not that Flynn was ever particularly good at that, and like any person who has grown long used to being the center of everyone’s entire world, she does not care to be rudely dispossessed of her toys. “Wilt thou not even tell me the reason for such hasty matrimony?” she enquires. “Or is that something else that thou must withhold from thine own sovereign lady?”

“It was a complicated affair, Your Majesty. Lucy was… in difficulties, in France.” If Elizabeth really starts digging for details, they are screwed, but she may be too proud to hear the whole sordid saga. “We had known each other before, and I felt it was easiest and most honorable to make a marriage and bring her here, to my household in London. It was done in haste, for to prevent Your Majesty’s enemies from making evil use of her.” Flynn is happy to darkly imply that Spanish assassins or Popish spies are involved in this, if it gives Elizabeth the impression that he has saved her from a greater evil. “You know that I learn certain things, in the course of my work for Your Majesty. Lucy is a loyal Englishwoman, and wishes only my lady’s health and favor. Her family hails from Preston, in times past.”

In fact, Lucy told Flynn back in Woodstock that she doesn’t think they are actually connected with the town, but at least it gives her some sort of nominally supported national origin, and frames this as returning a vulnerable English lady to the safety of the motherland’s bosom, rather than introducing a dangerous stranger. Flynn is having to think fast to guess what Elizabeth might want to hear, but at least she hasn’t shouted for the Yeomen Warders yet. The Queen utters a short huff. Then she says, “Gallant as it may be, Sir Garcia, I did not give thee permission to wed, nor did you apply for it.”

“There was not time. I did mean to sue for your blessing when I returned to London.” Mostly, at any rate. “You know I am your most devoted man, Your Majesty. I shall dismiss her to Essex if you absolutely wish, but I cannot – ” He has to be very careful with this part indeed. “I cannot presently consent to separate from her.”

Elizabeth regards him archly. “Send thy own wife to Essex? I suspect in that case, thou wouldst find her bedded by thy brother sooner rather than late. Or has he already?”

Flynn winces, as that is definitely too close to the mark. “She is _my_ wife, my lady.”

“And other women are the wives of other men. That does not seem to constrain thine ill-mannered heathen rakehell of a sibling.” Elizabeth must be the one woman in all of London who is not impressed by Gabriel’s charms, possibly because she was flattered by his attentions until she discovered that he did the same thing for everyone. They’ve never actually slept together, as far as Flynn knows; Elizabeth _is_ the Virgin Queen, even as it has been whispered for years that she had a secret affair with Robert Dudley, among others. “What exactly didst thou hope to achieve, by this return and this marriage?”

Flynn hesitates. “I had hope,” he says, as casually as possible, “that I might be permitted to consult with Your Majesty’s astrologer, John Dee. He has returned from Prague, has he not?”

“He lived in Bohemia near ten years with that charlatan of his association, Edward Kelley.” Elizabeth comes to a halt, leaning on the windowsill. “He has recently come to England again, yes, claiming some great cleavage between them. I know not what they had achieved by their alchemical experiments, but it seemed unsavory. There were stories that they had pledged each to take the other’s wife in trade, as principle of share and share alike. I do not think it wise that you consult Dr. Dee at present.”

That is not good, Flynn thinks. John Dee, one of the most famous alchemists, astrologers, and occultists of the entire age, is – as noted – one of Elizabeth’s chief advisors, and one of their top candidates for either the author or the compiler of Ashmole 782. But if Dee has tainted himself by his decade of increasingly esoteric experiments in Prague, Elizabeth is likely to keep him at arm’s length, and Flynn is not going to do any favors for his damaged reputation by insisting on a meeting. He definitely can’t go behind Elizabeth’s back again, and even if he himself will timewalk back to the present with Lucy, his past self will return to London and be caught in an ongoing mess. If he alters his own timeline too much, gets his past self into new difficulties, he could end up altering the trajectory of his entire life, and in that case possibly die, or never meet Lucy, and God only knows what could become of Gabriel –

He shakes himself away from that, and tries to focus. He can’t give up on Dee, they need to talk to him, which means Flynn will have to cozen himself back into Elizabeth’s good graces first. He turns to Elizabeth with an appealing smile. “I am here, am I not? And ready to be made use of? I again plead your Majesty’s pardons for the irregular nature of my marriage, but Lady Clairmont could be of use to you as well. She is an educated woman, kind and gay, could keep you good company, or serve as a lady-in-waiting. We are the both of us at, and always shall be, Your Majesty’s humble service.”

Elizabeth considers that, lips still pursed. Then all at once, she whirls on an alarmed-looking Lucy, hanging at the far side of the room. “Lady Clairmont. If you please.”

Lucy creeps forward, sinks into another deep curtsy, and remains there as Elizabeth surveys her critically. Then she turns to Flynn and asks, “Is she with child?”

“I – no, Your Majesty.” Flynn practically bites his own tongue off. “Not to the best of my knowledge, no.”

It isn’t clear whether this makes the situation better or not, though at least less complicated, and Elizabeth does not appear inclined to completely forgive this. The sense is that they are both on probation, any further mistakes or slip-ups will be regarded very dimly indeed, and that she is doing them a significant favor and expects it to be remembered. At last, she offers her hand to Lucy, who follows Flynn’s lead and kisses it. “Rise, Lady Clairmont.”

Lucy straightens up with evident relief, and Elizabeth surveys her gown and jewels with a judgmental air. It seems to pass preliminary muster, because she says, “Well, at least thou art not garbed as a pauper. Hast Sir Garcia provided for thee as a husband should?”

“He – ” Lucy coughs. She clearly has the opportunity to tell the Queen of England that there are certain elements of their relationship that she would like improved, and thus possibly receive a royal order to fix them. But she is not the kind of person to embarrass Flynn like that, even if he most likely deserves it. “He has been most gracious, Your Majesty, indeed.”

Elizabeth snorts, as if to say that she very much doubts that, but some of the thickest ice has been broken, and Flynn consents to let out half a breath. “He says thou art an educated woman? Mine own governess, Kat Ashley, and my last stepmother, Catherine Parr, were ladies of letters, and there is some amusement thee could be to me. Hast thou the Latin, Lady Clairmont? Greek? I have again been reading the _Satires_ of Juvenal, and could welcome a colloquy on them.”

“Ah – Latin, Your Majesty,” Lucy says, ducking her head deferentially, though it might be to avoid looking like a giddy fangirl over being invited to discuss classical literature with Queen Elizabeth. She is really quite adorable, and Flynn bites his cheek to restrain a grin of his own. “I have not read the _Satires_ in many years, I confess, but I am at your disposal.”

“I am not in need of another Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber just this minute,” Elizabeth says. “And surely – ” with an ironic and pointed stare at Flynn – “it would be cruelty to separate thee so soon from thy devoted husband, and so newly wedded. Yet we shall speak again, I think. Very well, Sir Garcia. For the nonce, thou hast my blessing upon thy union. But displease me again, in any manner or particular, and thou shalt not.”

Flynn tries not to wince, as what with they are going to be up to, the potential routes to displeasing her are endless. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”

“Name me also godmother to the first child,” Elizabeth says. “And curtail the hunting hound that is thy brother. Or at least most severely commend upon him the virtue of discretion, at pains of our very great displeasure.”

Flynn wants to point out that since Gabriel can’t contract or transmit any diseases, nor can he accidentally impregnate one of his many, many lovers (thank God for _that_ ), the women are getting nothing but pleasure out of this with no risk in return, and that must be why everyone has their pantaloons in a bunch about it. But then, their cuckolded husbands and the upended social equilibrium of London pose a considerable capacity for trouble, and they have to keep Elizabeth in a good mood if they have any chance of getting to Dr. Dee. Flynn agrees once more to get Gabriel to reduce his philandering, and with that, finally, the shadow of the Tower which has lain over them seems to be decisively lifted. Elizabeth dismisses them, with assurances that she will send for Lucy again soon, and they are allowed to take their leave, heading out to the courtyard, where the carriage arrives to collect them. It’s clear from the expression on Karl’s face that he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to see them again and it might not have been terrible if he didn’t, but he is charitable enough not to say so. They get in and rattle down the drive, back toward the Strand, as both of them let out whooping breaths of relief. “Thank God,” Lucy says weakly. “I thought we were doomed.”

“I told you it was going to be all right.” Nonetheless, Flynn knows they had a very close shave, and reaches for her hand, squeezing hard. They have survived their first major test and are no longer at immediate risk of indefinite imprisonment, which is a solid plus. “Now I just have to figure out how to get Gabriel to knock it off for a fortnight or two.”

Lucy raises both eyebrows, as if to say better him than her. They arrive back at the house in a few more minutes, everyone is clearly relieved to see them with heads still on their shoulders, and Lucy goes upstairs to immediately wash and change. For his part, Flynn also wants to get out of these damn clothes, which he does, then decides that he should put the rest of the day to good use. He goes into his study, writes a quick note, then instructs one of the pages to convey it to wherever in London Gabriel has taken lodgings. He does not actually know where that is. Normally Gabriel would stay here when he travels into the city, since this _is_ the de Clermonts’ house, and he might have been expecting to do so again, only to be thrown off by the news of a sudden wife. It might be easier to keep an eye on him if they’re under the same roof, but Flynn does not want to deal with the constant parade of drama (and outraged husbands) that would obtain if they were once more roommates. This is going to be hard enough without Gabriel attracting extra trouble.

It is an hour-odd later when Parry returns with the news that Lord Gabriel and Lord Christian have arrived, and they are shown into the solar for Flynn to receive them. Gabriel strides over, claps Flynn on both shoulders, and kisses him on each cheek, with an air of definite relief. “Thank the saints you aren’t dead, darling,” he remarks. “We could not altogether be certain. Have you talked Old Bess around, then?”

Flynn gives his brother a look, as Gabriel has both casually used a Catholic turn of phrase and referred to the Queen of England as “Old Bess,” and even though this might be a private conversation in their own house, in French, he really thinks they could avoid more problems. “More or less,” he says. “But she had a condition for that, and it involves you.”

“Me?” Gabriel keeps smiling. “I am, of course, flattered by Her Majesty’s regard.”

“You won’t be in a moment,” Flynn says. “She would strongly prefer that you curtail your present vigorous schedule of… social activities. It will be trouble for us both if you don’t.”

“Oh, that again?” Gabriel raises one exquisite black eyebrow. “If the husbands of London have such lamentation with my attention to their wives, they could trouble to do something about it. Truly, they should thank me. If they insist on neglecting their ladies, I bring them nothing but happiness, which would not be the case with other men.”

Since Flynn was just thinking that earlier, he is about to agree – God, this urge to defend Gabriel, no matter how ridiculous he is, has never entirely left him, it is his most fundamental orientation and soul – but he can’t. “I am quite serious,” he says. “We have to keep the Queen well-disposed, it – it’s important. We have to talk to Dr. Dee.”

“Ah yes, the great man of mystery,” Gabriel says dismissively. “I have heard quite a tale or two of that one. Darling, why must you toddle around with alchemists and their bangs and smells and smokes? Everyone knows that they are utter frauds, and far too puffed up with the delusion that all their pompous muttering means something, unveils some grand secret of the universe, when all it reveals is that their cocks are very small and they know not how to use them. I can introduce you to far more scintillating pursuits, which you – ”

“It’s _important,”_ Flynn snaps. “For you as well as for me.”

“Is it?” Gabriel regards him, head cocked, some of the amusement gone from his face. He takes a step, patently threatening in its cool restraint. “Who is this new witch wife of yours exactly, darling? You were planning to mention that, were you not? Or simply trust that I had not noticed?”

Christian’s jaw drops. “Aunt Lucy is a witch?”

“Really, my love,” Gabriel says, fondly but with a slight exasperated edge, “do you walk around with your eyes closed _all_ the time? It was apparent the moment I saw her. Not only do we not know a thing about her or her family, but now your uncle is up to some secret purpose he will not contrive to tell me. Why should I leave off living my life, merely to make it easier for this beldam and whatever dark art she may be working?”

“I’m not being bewitched, you idiot.” Ah yes, Flynn thinks. An argument. A far more familiar method of communicating with his brother. “What Lucy and I are doing together is important. And we _do_ have to speak with Dr. Dee.”

“Then speak with him.” Gabriel rolls his eyes at the heavens, as if he truly cannot believe how difficult life is for people less gifted than himself. “I imagine I could find his residence in the city with scarce an hour of effort. What shall Bess do, take away your knighthood because you went for supper? Just because you confine yourself like a monk – and even more so these days after being wedded, not less, by the looks of things – does not mean I must do the same. With that so – ”

“It was a direct order from the Queen of England, you arrogant ass! Even you can’t just roll your eyes and go on your merry way! It does not matter whether you think it was meritless, as long as you are in England, you have to – ”

“I don’t suppose that you have much standing to refresh my memory upon English law.” Gabriel looks at him, slit-eyed. “Given that in my recollection, it takes the banns to be read thrice, the obtaining of a license, a due grace period, and the attestation of at least two witnesses for a marriage to be solemnized. As none of that seems to exist for you and your new witch, you will forgive me for not believing a word of this utter – ”

“Papa,” Christian breaks in, looking worried. “Uncle Garcia. Don’t fight.”

Gabriel takes a breath, moving half a step back; he and Flynn have managed to end up almost nose to nose. He rubs his face, as if trying to control his expression. Then he says curtly, “Apologies. But if my brother insists upon this farce that he is in fact married, to a strange witch that may be exerting any number of fell influences upon him and – ”

“I already said I wasn’t enchanted.” Flynn wonders if Present Gabriel will feel it if he throttles Past Gabriel, just for old time’s sake. “And that it – ”

“Yes, well.” Gabriel’s voice has turned even more sleek. “You wouldn’t think you were, would you? Perhaps if you permitted me to question Lucy more privily – ”

“I’m well aware of what ‘question privily’ actually means, you – ”

Gabriel does not respond, still eyeing him icily, but with something in his expression that makes Flynn wonder. He and Gabriel have been inseparable for over seven hundred years at this point, and for Garcia to turn up out of the blue married to a woman that Gabriel has never heard about, and for him then to share nothing whatsoever about her or what is going on, is a major slap in the face. Just like his present counterpart back in Sept-Tours, Gabriel is wildly jealous of Lucy materializing from nowhere and exerting such a powerful and inexplicable thrall on his brother, made worse when they are still so close and Garcia should have told him everything, maybe even trusted him with executing the marriage and covering for everyone else. Flynn obviously can’t tell him the truth, that he’s trying to save Gabriel’s life as one of his paramount objectives, but it’s going to make things tenuous. They’ll get over it, if nothing else when Past Flynn returns and has no clue about any of this, but still. He had barely wrapped his head around the idea of a Gabriel who once more loved him, and this, watching their estrangement start to happen again in real time, is unbearably painful.

“I promise,” Flynn says, “that I have a good reason for this. I can’t tell you why right now, but I… well, I hope it will make sense eventually. Can you trust me on that? Please?”

Despite himself, Gabriel is caught off guard. He looks Flynn up and down, studies his face, and seems to conclude that insofar as it goes, he’s not lying. He sighs. “Very well, darling,” he allows at last. “If you truly must. But I _will_ uncover what has gone on, mark me. Nor shall I be the only one. I must be off, I am expected at supper later.”

Flynn decides, in the name of truce, not to ask where exactly that is, or what other entertainments Gabriel might be expecting later. Gabriel turns to go, and Christian starts to follow his father out, but Flynn calls, “A moment.”

Puzzled, his nephew turns back. “Aye, Uncle Garcia?”

Flynn is still rocked back on his heels by the sight of him, his living presence, his confused expression. He half-reaches out as if to hug him for no reason at all, stops, decides that Christian is the only person in this entire family who would accept it without asking any questions, and manages it, as clumsily as if his arms are broken. Christian is puzzled, but hugs him back. “I love you too, Uncle,” he says. “What exactly did you want?”

Flynn laughs wryly. “I wanted to ask if you could help me. It’s about your father.”

“Of course I want to help Papa.” Christian considers, then qualifies, “Unless it involves anything to do with Lord Pembroke again. In which matter, I think you should.”

“Christ. Gabriel can see to that himself.” Flynn shudders. “Would you be willing to go to Berwick? In Scotland. There’s someone there your aunt and I need to talk to.”

Christian blinks. “Berwick? Why is that?”

Flynn looks around warily to make sure that none of the servants are in earshot, and lowers his voice anyway. “There’s someone there I need you to find. A witch and a healer, Agnes Sampson by name. Tell her that a rich gentleman in London has need of her services, that there is another witch seeking her help, and offer to pay her whatsoever she would like. She may live in Humbie just now, near Edinburgh. Somewhere in East Lothian, at any rate. Fetch her down here. Tell no one of your name, her name, or your purpose.”

“A Scottish witch, Uncle?” Christian frowns. “What does this have to do with Papa?”

“It just does.” Flynn wonders if he can ask Christian to keep this secret even from Gabriel himself, and decides to worry about that later. “Can you do it?”

“Aye, I suppose.” Christian is still perplexed, but not unwilling. “But it may take me up to a fortnight to travel to Scotland, find her, and return. I hope not so long, but still.”

“That makes no matter, as long as you do.” Flynn grasps his shoulders, feeling something shake inside him. God, Christian is _here_ and he’s _real_ and he wants to help them save his father, even knowing nothing about what this actually means, and some time from now, Flynn will have to return to the present, and see the real Gabriel, and tell him this. “Aye?”

Christian pauses one last time, then nods firmly. “Aye, Uncle,” he says. “As you bid. If all is well, I’ll set off on the morrow.”

“Good lad.” Flynn can’t help himself, kisses him on the forehead, and Christian happily accepts the affection with a nuzzle under his chin. “Get you going.”

* * *

Lucy goes to bed that night profoundly relieved that they are not dead. It has been, to say the least, a rocky few days settling in here, and ordinarily, she would like to just space out for a while, sleep, catch up on some TV and not check the news for a while. That, however, is the exact opposite of what she can do, for several reasons. Now that they are cleared of the imminent threat of imprisonment, they have to come up with an actual plan, rather than just reacting to all the entry-shock crises, and that means there is no time to rest on their laurels. Flynn told her that he sent his nephew up to Scotland in search of Agnes Sampson, but it will take a while, with the unavoidable limitations of sixteenth-century transport, to bring her to London. Lucy wonders if they are then obliged to send her back. Agnes is a respected elderly woman, wrongfully accused and horrifically tortured, finally put to death on the basis of coerced confessions. The Berwick witch trials will have other victims, they can’t save them all, but must they knowingly condemn Agnes to an awful fate, when they could stop it, just for the sake of history? Does that make them responsible for her murder?

“We’ll see,” Flynn says, when Lucy brings this up. “I told Christian to be careful. Nobody knows her yet, she hasn’t been accused, but if it does end up happening anyway, I don’t want it to blow back onto him, for fraternizing with her. He’s a vampire, I don’t think there’s much they could do to him, but – ” He stops. “I’d just rather avoid it.”

Lucy can imagine so, as it is clear that Flynn cannot bear to get his nephew hurt or in trouble in any way, and that the question of whether they can save innocent people from terrible fates does not ultimately concern Agnes. _Is_ there a way to save Christian? Timewalk to 1762 and snatch him away from the vampire hunters, bring him to the present with them? Or would that really throw off whatever delicate cosmic balance they’re trying to keep in order here? Lucy knows there are rules about what timewalkers can and can’t do, but even those, as Barbossa would say, are guidelines more than actual rules. They’re there in hopes of constraining witches from doing supervillain things (though Benjamin Cahill clearly missed the memo) but they can’t physically _prevent_ them. Lucy wonders who she is and what someone has done with timid, always-follow-the-rules Lucy Preston, if she’s seriously contemplating breaking all laws of time and space to save a kid she’s only known for one day. But seeing Gabriel like that, with him… seeing all of them, happy…

She is exhausted, but for once, she stays awake even after Flynn has fallen asleep. He has allowed her to snuggle into his side, wrapping his arm around her, and Lucy lies there with her head on his chest, unable to quiet her mind long enough to drop under. Frankly, she really could use a round of athletic sex, release some of her pent-up tension and give her enough of an endorphin rush to relax her and conk her out, but they still don’t seem to be there yet. She’s not actually going to ask Gabriel, but if he could tell at a literal glance, it must be obvious. Flynn hasn’t suddenly decided that she’s repulsive within the last seven days, has he? Is it just lingering paranoia from startling her that one time? He never hurt her, she never felt threatened, but she knows he’s not human in good and bad ways alike. But like she said, she can’t do this alone, and the only person she _can_ do it with is him.

It takes a long time, and the DMV threatens to make a repeat appearance, but Lucy finally falls asleep. They are not interrupted by Gabriel the next morning (alas?), and Flynn sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. “I need to go visit Walter Raleigh,” he says. “He lives just down the street, in Durham House, and he’s the head of the School of Night. He’s probably heard at least something about this by now, whether from Marlowe or from the court, and I need to see what. As for you – ”

“For one thing, I need to get my hands on a copy of the _Satires,_ if Elizabeth wants to have book club with me.” Lucy’s Latin is pretty good, but transcribing bits of medieval documents and treatises is quite different from plowing through Juvenal’s notoriously dense and self-consciously elaborate classical prose. “I know there were booksellers listed on the Ashmole fragment. I could go to one of those and kill two birds with one stone.”

“All right,” Flynn agrees, “but you can’t go by yourself. Lady Clairmont can’t carry her own shopping, it’s beneath her dignity, so you’ll have to take Meg. And we’ll have to appoint someone to serve as stick man.”

“What?” Lucy snorts. “Stick man?”

“I’m sure there is a more elaborate term for it,” Flynn says, “but as a noblewoman, you obviously can’t walk around London alone and unprotected. A man of the household goes in front of you with a stick or a club, presumably to beat off ne’er-do-wells. We’ll hire more members of your privy staff apart from just Meg, but until then – ” He scowls. “Damn it. We’ll have to use Karl. He’s the head groom, he’d be insulted if we didn’t.”

Lucy isn’t sure how much she likes Karl, who is the sandy-haired, mustached one who was clearly judging her at first acquaintance, but the idea of walking around London by herself, without Flynn’s reassuringly huge and glowering presence, is admittedly intimidating, and she would like some backup. That is how, after she has dressed and had a bite of bread, she finds herself foraging out into the city with Meg and Karl. Meg walks two steps behind her, carrying Lucy’s basket, and Karl walks two steps ahead, baton stoutly in hand, occasionally yelling at bums to make way for Lady Clairmont. It all feels slightly “bring out your dead!” from _Monty Python_ , but that is just how it goes, apparently.

They walk toward Fleet Street, which is the heart of London’s bookselling trade. The place they are supposed to find is ‘near St Dunstan’s-in-the-West, at the sign of the White Hart, at the shop under the Dial,’ which is as close as it comes to precise directions; Google Maps, this is not. The printing press was invented just over a hundred years ago and is all the rage, everybody above the working class reads for leisure, and even the poor, who might have attended their neighborhood petty school for a year or two, can probably scratch out their own name. There are Bible translations, tracts, and commentaries, literature such as Cervantes’ _Don Quixote_ and Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales,_ French and Italian lays and romances, scholarly works like Montaigne’s _Essais,_ Castiglione’s _Book of the Courtier,_ Machiavelli’s _The Prince,_ and other political and social Renaissance philosophy. Indeed, there is a voracious appetite for reading that is almost enviable to Lucy, as all the fashionable folk of London rush out to get their hands on any new book that appears. In this case, she is solidly unsuspicious, and they finally locate the shop in question. Karl raps firmly on the door with the stick, and having verified that it is safe for entry, they proceed inside.

The proprietor is one William Middleton, a name that sounds dimly familiar to Lucy. She thinks he is an academic and pamphleteer who was kicked out of Cambridge on several occasions, even though he is a diehard Protestant and Cambridge has a reputation as the more Reformation-minded of the two great universities; Oxford is still viewed as suspiciously pro-Catholic in its leanings. In any event, while he is searching among his shelves for any copies of the _Satires,_ which has become an in-demand title due to the Queen reading it, Lucy looks around, spots a nearby volume, pulls it out – and feels as if she’s been hit by lightning. It’s an ordinary book, decorated with a woodcut and entitled _An Newe Historie of the Republick of VENICE._ That, however, is not what has caught Lucy’s eye. That is the name of the author: _Jessica Proctor._

Lucy stares at the book, mind whirling. Jessica Proctor was her friend and colleague at Oxford, until she was blackmailed and turned into a thrall by the vampire Michael Temple, forced to break into Flynn’s laboratory and steal Lucy’s bloodwork, and then to try to kill him directly. That was the incident which resulted in Gabriel getting stabbed and nearly dying. To save Jessica’s life, and keep her away from a vengeful Maria de Clermont, Lucy timewalked her into the past, into fifteenth-century Florence. Jessica is also the ex-girlfriend of Flynn and Gabriel’s younger brother Wyatt, who begged them to save her from his mother, and this –

There’s really no one else it can be. The name _Jessica_ is first used in William Shakespeare’s _The Merchant of Venice,_ she’s the daughter of the Jewish moneylender Shylock. Lucy wonders faintly if Shakespeare saw this exact book, a Jessica from Venice, and that was where he decided to borrow it from. Venice makes sense as a place for Jessica to end up, if she traveled there from Florence. It is, or will be, the headquarters of the Congregation, so if Jessica was in search of a fellow witch to return her to the present, she might have hoped to find one there. She’s an early modernist, a specialist in Renaissance Italy, so like any good historian, she must have taken the opportunity to write a book with all the primary sources no longer available in the present. Has she already had an entire life – the publication date of the book is 1484 – grown old, and died? Or perhaps she was killed within a few years of her arrival? Is this a coded cry for help, hoping that a timewalking witch would see it, know where and when she was, and go retrieve her?

Lucy is still in shock, much to the confusion of Meg and Karl, when Middleton returns. “I’ve the last of the _Satires_ here, my lady. Sixpence.”

“Ah – yes, very well. This – this one too.” Lucy thrusts the _Historie_ on top. “Gramercy.”

She pays for the books, Middleton wraps them in brown paper and Meg puts them in her basket, and with Karl in the stick-brandishing lead, they emerge into the street. Meg looks at Lucy worriedly, doubtless still suspecting her of pregnancy-related faintness. “Shall I fetch you something to drink, my lady? You are verily pale as a sheet.”

“I’m all right.” Lucy does not think she should explain that she personally knows someone writing a book over a century ago, and that the question of whether she has to go back and get Jessica as well has been added to her very long list of worries. “Do either of you know if there is somewhere in London that sells books of an… alchemical nature?”

“Alchemy?” Meg blinks. “Is that a proper art for you, my lady?”

“I’ve studied it,” Lucy says, since there’s really no point in pretending she isn’t strange. Alchemy is, as most formal intellectual fields are in this day and age, an exclusively male pursuit, but despite its grandiose and mysterious reputation, it’s also regarded as a bit of a joke. After all, alchemists, despite all their claims to secret wisdom, have never actually turned lead into gold or anything else, none of their powders or potions or solutions really do anything, and in some ways, it’s the first pseudo-science: look impressive, use big words, turn out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors. Ben Jonson’s _The Alchemist,_ written in 1610, is a scathing takedown of greedy, self-important, fraudulent charlatans who really believe their own nonsense and just want to use it to get rich and scam the public. But then, that is only the case for human alchemists. Genuine creatures with actual powers, witches and vampires and daemons, can use real magic, and Ashmole 782 is anything but a joke.

Meg and Karl exchange a look, as if weighing up how weird their new mistress is, exactly. Neither of them can think of such a place, and they return to the Old Lodge in time for a late dinner (which is to say, lunch). Flynn is still gone, hopefully things are going well with Walter Raleigh (that is a very strange sentence) and Lucy is just wondering if she has the nerve to crack Jessica’s book when Robert Parry appears at the door. “My lady?”

He once more looks to be holding some kind of letter, and Lucy’s heart skips a beat, since the last one was Elizabeth’s summons to court. “Aye?”

“I have a message for you and my lord.” Parry moves forward, bows, and hands it to her. “It is from Baynard’s Castle.” At her blank look, he discreetly supplies, “The Earl and Countess of Pembroke, my lady.”

“Pembroke?” Lucy is pretty sure that name came up the other morning, in the course of Gabriel relating his riotous sexual exploits. If this is a formal challenge to a duel, it really should go to him, not them. “Is it entirely – ?”

Parry gives her a look as if to say he has not read their mail, and Lucy grits her teeth, picks up the missive, and breaks the wax seal. She holds her breath as she scans the elaborate writing, but it doesn’t seem to be throwing the gauntlet. Instead, of all things, it is an invitation to a ball, the night after the morrow. My lord and lady of Pembroke wish to be the first to welcome my lord and lady of Clairmont to the society of London, and their prompt response and attendance, as guests of honor, will be greatly appreciated.

Lucy is fairly sure that they can’t refuse without causing offense, even though she wonders if this is a thinly veiled pretense to get Gabriel in a private corner and Laertes the shit out of him. (They’d need a silver dagger, but has Lord Pembroke thought of that?) To say the least, she does not feel up to attending a ball, but she has to do any number of things she does not feel capable of. Parry mentions that the messenger is still waiting for a response, so clearly they have been instructed not to leave without one, and since Flynn is gone, that means the call is Lucy’s. She has no choice but to graciously accept, say that Lord and Lady Clairmont will be happy to attend, and to thank the Pembrokes for their courtesy.

With that, Lucy worries for the rest of the afternoon, until Flynn gets home around four o’clock. Tea, coffee, and chocolate are all unknown in Elizabethan London (Lucy is already suffering) so they can’t exactly have a cuppa and biscuits, but they sit down together for a snack anyway, and Lucy tells him about it. “Why would the Pembrokes invite us to a ball?” she asks. “Doesn’t Lord Pembroke want to – you know?”

Flynn rolls his eyes, as if to say trust Gabriel to screw them over, literally. “I’d be surprised if he didn’t have something to do with this,” he says. “He did say he wanted more information on us – specifically, on you. If he convinced Mary to throw a ball as a convenient way to – ”

“Mary?” Lucy blinks. “Wait, Lady Pembroke?”

“Yes,” Flynn says. “Mary Sidney. I imagine you’ve heard of her?”

Lucy opens and shuts her mouth, feeling outraged at herself for not realizing this sooner. The countess of Pembroke, and Gabriel’s mistress, is currently none other than Mary Sidney, one of the first female poets and literary patronesses in Elizabethan England, who is a close friend of Shakespeare’s and is in fact one of the people proposed to have “actually” written his sonnets. Lucy hates anti-Stratfordianism anyway, especially since she suspects part of it is to de-queer some of his gayer sonnets by making the authorial voice female, but Mary Sidney is amazing, and even if this is very possibly a trap, Lucy is almost tempted to risk it for the chance of meeting her. She can also see why Mary would be drawn to Gabriel. Mary is just twenty-nine years old, a pretty, vivacious, intellectual redhead, and the third wife of her much older husband, who is so excruciatingly proper that he was once made an honorary gentleman of the bedchamber to the King of Spain and such a miser that he famously does not even leave Mary’s own jewels to her in his will when he dies. A passionate affair with the dashing, handsome, attentive Gabriel might be the least that Mary deserves, dammit.

Lucy has already accepted the invitation anyway, so there is that, and she is so busy thinking of what to say to Mary to impress her that she almost forgets to ask Flynn how things went with Sir Walter. By the look of Flynn’s face, they could have been better. “He is quite preoccupied over the fate of Roanoke,” he says. “He sent John White back to the New World just recently, as their return was delayed by the Spanish Armada, and at this point, the colonists have been left on their own for over two years. I was tempted to tell him that they were gone, just to speed things up, but I couldn’t have explained how I knew.”

“The lost colony of Roanoke?” Lucy remembers belatedly that yes, Walter Raleigh was the main patron of that, and this is the year that the colony’s governor John White, returning to the settlement in August 1590, finds it mysteriously and totally abandoned, something to puzzle history ever since. Thomas Harriot, another member of the School of Night, was an important part of that, learning the Algonquian language and insisting (perhaps rather too optimistically) that friendly relations were possible between the Native Americans and the white settlers. To say the least, they can’t wait for August, three months from now, and then however long it takes the news to get back to England, for Sir Walter to think about other things. “Can you just tell him anyway? You could say that I’m a witch, I saw their fate, or…?”

“I’ll think about it.” Flynn drums his fingers on the table, frowning. “Did you get the _Satires?”_

“Yes, and more than that.” Lucy pulls out Jessica’s book and shows it to him. “What on earth do we do about this?”

Flynn’s eyebrows fly up, as he grasps the importance just as well as her. “I don’t know. We can’t exactly go get her right now. Do you think it’s some kind of message? To us, or – others?”

It occurs to Lucy that if this book exists now, a copy might survive all the way down to the present, and Michael Temple could find it. They can’t stop him, they can’t do anything about him, and they can’t protect Jessica if he finds a way to retrieve her again. There is so much they can’t control, and while it feels disloyal to Jessica to put her on the back burner once again, they can’t go anywhere (or any _when_ ) right now. Lucy will have to read it closely and see if there’s anything Jessica might have found out that can help them, but if she has that information, so could Temple. God, this is _impossible_.

The next day passes quickly, and Lucy barely has time to look at the book at all, what with the household management she has to do. Then it’s the day of the ball, and while Flynn is off that morning working some more on Raleigh, Lucy has to once more practice her curtsies and conversation and dancing and everything else. Her new wardrobe has mostly arrived, the servants are putting the finishing touches on her new quarters, and seem to be more or less coming around to the idea that she and Flynn are actually married, but Lucy is still feeling completely overwhelmed. She can’t embarrass them in front of half of London high society tonight, especially if this is a setup to do just that. Maybe if they make a scene, Lord Pembroke will feel vindicated in asking Elizabeth to order all the de Clermonts banished from the city at once. Could Gabriel be _any_ more of a drama king? Really.

Late that afternoon, Flynn returns, they both get decked out in their best, and ride down the Strand to Baynard’s Castle, the seat of the Pembroke family. It also does not exist in the present day, a handsome riverside palace where they have entertained the Queen and – at least until his death in 1588 – Mary’s famous uncle, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. Lucy has been spending a lot of time with genealogy tables, as it is imperative to remember who is related to who, and while she knows some of it already, the details are endless and endlessly fiddly. They pull up in the line of carriages discharging their elaborately bedecked grandees, Lucy steps down, and takes tight hold of Flynn’s arm. He has not worn his sword, as that would be impolite for a formal social engagement, but she can’t shake the feeling that there may be trouble anyway. Should she pretend to faint? That might not be hard.

They are bowed inside by the gentlemen ushers of the Pembroke household, and as their entrance is announced, every single head swivels in extremely keen interest that they do not remotely trouble to disguise. Lucy feels as if she’s standing in a bright spotlight, and can hear the whispers breaking out, as she and Flynn make their way across to the dais where the Earl and Countess of Pembroke are standing. Oh god, that is Mary Sidney. She is very pretty even with the artificial beauty standards of the time, and Lucy is presently experiencing useless bisexual panic. They are not going to be shot on sight, are they?

At least it does not seem that way. She and Flynn bow and curtsy as Lord and Lady Pembroke bow and curtsy in return, exchange their greetings, and are cordially welcomed to the evening. There will be supper shortly, and then dancing. If Lord Pembroke knows that they are the brother and sister-in-law of the notorious local rakehell who has been seducing his wife, he does not outwardly show it. What _is_ going on here?

Lucy accepts a glass of claret from one of the ushers, because a drink might steady her nerves, and then she is swarmed by people from every side, who have barely been waiting for their chance. They all want to ask about her strange looks, strange accent, the deliciously scandalous story of her sudden marriage and arrival in London, and whatever else, and she is quickly separated from Flynn in the human tide. It is very hot and very loud and very close, she is sweating like a pig in her eighty pounds of clothing, and is starting to feel a panic attack coming on when someone swoops up at her elbow. “Lady Clairmont. Allow me.”

Lucy turns in abject relief to thank her savior, who is dressed in artfully fashionable black-and-white-striped silk and wearing a jeweled half-mask, a cloak thrown dashingly over one shoulder. She is about to ask his name, and then recognizes the dark eyes gleaming at her. She feels a sensation as if she’s missed a step going downstairs. “Master Marlowe.”

“Indeed.” Kit takes her elbow, steering her away from the latest incoming viscount. “I see truly that I was mistaken in taking thee for a whore the other night, at the Rose. Thou dost indeed have my sincere apologies. A splendid gathering, is it not?”

Lucy opens her mouth, not sure what to say, and shuts it. She is grateful for the rescue, but it clearly comes with strings attached, and she wonders what on earth Marlowe is doing here anyway, apart from being a Petty Drama Gay and not giving a shit who knows it. Maybe he’s taking the opportunity to scope out the competition in more ways than one, what with Mary’s friendship with his rival, Will Shakespeare – poetic espionage? She would not put it past him. Kit expertly snags another glass of something off a passing tray, and hands it to her. “Finest Rhenish, Lady Clairmont. Thou wilt try it?”

Reflexively, Lucy takes it, though she remembers the barman back at the inn offering them Rhenish and Flynn turning it down. One sip tells her why: it is good, but eye-wateringly strong, and she cannot suppress the suspicion that Marlowe is not-so-subtly trying to get her toasted. “It is delicious,” she manages. “Truly. But before dinner – ”

“Come now. Surely we can sport ourselves somehow?” Marlowe sounds careless. “Many of us are most… intrigued by you, Mistress Lucy. Some sort of exchange can be arranged?”

Seeing as he started off with the respectable _Lady Clairmont_ and they’re now down to _Mistress Lucy,_ she wonders if Marlowe is deliberately seeing how far he can lowball her before she corrects him. They stare at each other, an unspoken challenge between them, until Lucy decides to take the bull by the horns. “What do you want, Kit?”

He smiles faintly, as if in acknowledgment that the gambit has been struck. “Only a few things,” he says airily. “There are all manner of rumors in London about thee. Surely thou must know that. If I was to sort the true from the false, surely we could be closer friends? Or at least not enemies? I know thou hast made… efforts to infiltrate our School.”

“We’re not infiltrating it,” Lucy says. “Garcia is a member.”

Marlowe nods deferentially, but his eyes are sharper and darker than ever. He clearly thinks that Lucy has put Flynn up to it somehow, manipulated or cozened him, and he does not trust this sudden, inexplicable influence she has on him. Then he says, sharply and unmistakably, “If you intend to make yourself our enemy, mistress – ”

“I don’t.” Lucy stares back at him. “Besides, I thought Gabriel was the one you were sleeping with?”

Marlowe flinches, and she wonders if that, even in the name of reminding him the blackmail could go two ways here, was a bad idea. After all, he could very much be hanged for sodomy, this isn’t a rumor he wants getting around, and if she looks as if she’s going to be too free with it, he could take drastic steps to stop her. “You seem most informed upon my personal doings, mistress.”

“I’m not your enemy,” Lucy says. “Or Garcia’s. We – it’s very complicated. But we need the School’s help. It’s for everyone’s good, including yours.”

Marlowe laughs, but it does not reach his eyes. They flick over to where, speak of the devil, a tall and dazzlingly handsome figure recognizable even from this distance as Gabriel de Clermont is bowing lingeringly over Mary Sidney’s hand. Lord Pembroke, thankfully, is not nearby, and from the way Gabriel and Mary look at each other, Lucy thinks that despite his earlier travails, he will have no difficulty getting laid tonight. Kit watches them with a muscle working in his cheek, as if even his proxy de Clermont does not belong to him alone, and no matter if expecting fidelity from Gabriel is clearly an even worse idea, Lucy can’t help but feel briefly bad for him. “Gabriel is – ” she starts awkwardly. “He’s – well – he is – ”

“I am aware.” Kit tears his eyes off them and turns back to her. “Well then. Shall we be friends, mistress? Or… not?”

“I am willing to be friends,” Lucy says cautiously. “So long as you are.”

Marlowe considers this, looks as if there are plenty of things he could say, and finally shrugs. “We shall see,” he says. “Though if I learn nothing to your credit, I shall not hesitate to suggest to Sir Walter that he neither receives nor entertains you.”

With that parting shot, he turns on his heel and vanishes into the crowd, as Lucy stares after him. The message is clear: she isn’t getting to the School of Night if she doesn’t win Marlowe over, and they aren’t getting to Dr. Dee if they don’t win Elizabeth over. That is the way politics work here. After the military rivalry and infighting of the nobility in earlier centuries, they now compete for favor and patronage at court, sharks in silk, cannibals and sycophants and cutthroats all willing to do whatever it takes for the king (or in this case, queen) to take notice of them and bestow largess. Everyone knows how the Boleyn and Howard families shamelessly manipulated their daughters into Henry’s arms, only for it then to spectacularly backfire, and Lucy knew this was going to be a dirty fight. But still.

The Pembroke steward sounds a bell to shuffle the guests into the dining room, they are seated according to rank, and Lucy finds herself beside another baron she does not know, as husbands and wives are not normally placed together. The servers, called sewers, move around the table to pour wine, and the Yeomen of the Pantry must bow at various stages as they bring dishes into the hall and follow the social hierarchy in serving them. Lucy is very hungry, but when she finally takes a bite of her meat, she almost gags. It’s drenched in honey and sugar, as is everything else on the plate; the Elizabethans believe sugar has medicinal purposes and should be taken in large quantities with everything, which probably explains their teeth. Vegetables are regarded as “food of the dirt,” unsuitable for the gently born, so there is not much green stuff, and Lucy nibbles at the least saccharine bits of supper that she can find, hoping she is not insulting the Pembrokes’ hospitality. Her fingers are sticky, since forks are only used for serving and not for personal eating, and her head is starting to pound, her vision blurring. She is more than ready to go home and not be here anymore.

Alas, the evening is only beginning. Once they have finally finished the several courses of supper, they return to the main hall, a lute and viol and harpsichord player strike up music, and Lucy is thereupon expected to dance. They start out with a stately pavane, and she looks frantically around for Flynn, but he’s partnered with someone else at the far side of the hall. She has no choice but to curtsy to the viscount in front of her, and hope that she looks like she knows what she is doing.

At the end of the first dance, it is clear that the viscount is waiting for something, and as Lucy looks around, she sees that all the other women are kissing their partners; it’s clear that this is the usual token of appreciation for a dance. Lucy has already noticed that the Elizabethans kiss each other a lot, even more than modern French people do, and that male foreigners are noted to do so the most (maybe this explains Gabriel?) She doesn’t really want to kiss every man she dances with, especially since most of them, as noted, have pretty bad teeth and also because that’s an easy way to spread diseases, but she can’t be rude. She puckers up, feels like she’s betraying her feminist principles, and does so.

The next dance is faster, Lucy has to kiss a greasy earl at the end of it, and she really wants to go find a corner to hide out until this is over, no matter the risk of serious social affront. But then a hand catches her, spins her lightly up into his arms, and she finds herself face to beautiful face with Gabriel de Clermont, who is still not wearing any sort of mask or making any attempt to disguise his identity. He clearly does not care in the least if Lord Pembroke throws down right here, or else he is counting on those Spanish-king-approved manners to restrain him. He smiles at Lucy, inclining his head. “Why, darling. Good evening.”

“Good – evening,” Lucy manages, mouth dry, as Gabriel turns her about, and draws her close again. His hand on her back is large and solid, and she cannot help but imagine it pushing apart her thighs. He is very hard to resist like this, whether unintentionally or on purpose, and she fights against the feeling that she is the one being bewitched. Struggling to recollect herself, she says quietly, “Did you arrange this?”

“This?” Gabriel cocks an eyebrow at the sea of candlelight and bright fabrics, flashing jewels and whirling couples. “This small entertainment? I may have suggested that it would be a useful thing to welcome you to society, Lady Clairmont. Are you not grateful?”

“What do you want?” Lucy is managing to keep up with him, at least, and not step on his feet. Between Kit earlier and now this, she is feeling decidedly spied upon. “I don’t – Garcia and I, we – ”

“Mmm, indeed.” Gabriel pulls her close, his mouth brushing against her ear, stirring her sweat-damped hair. “We have much we could share, you and I, do you not think? I am not an unreasonable man – nor, as you will have noticed, limited in my experiences. Who are you really, Lucy, _ma ch_ _érie?_ Where did you come from? Who are your witch friends? What arts are you practicing, whose aims are you serving?”

“I’m here with your brother.” Lucy meets his ink-dark gaze as steadily as she can. She is having a hard time getting enough air, for more than one reason. “As his wife.”

“As his wife.” Gabriel ghosts a chuckle against her cheek, turning to brush it with the lightest and most promising of kisses. “Forgive me, but we all know that Garcia has not looked at a woman since the death of his human Lorena, many centuries ago. I have done my best to remedy it, and yet. When I saw you the other morning, my dearest, you looked anything but well-fucked. You are no wife. I have not worked out what yet, but not that. And now I hear that my sweet, trusting son has gone to Scotland to find another witch? Your suggestion?”

“We’re trying to help you,” Lucy says. “Truly. We just – ”

“And what help do I seem to need?” They reach a break in the music, and the ordinary thing to do would be to change to another partner, but Gabriel is clearly not inclined to let her go. “Is this another tiresome concern for my virtue, such as Garcia attempted to importune to me the other day? Or something else?”

“It’s – ” For a moment, Lucy teeters dangerously on the brink of just telling him, but she can’t. “As you say, I’m a witch. I know things about what happens to you. Garcia and I are trying to – we’re thinking… long-term.”

Gabriel studies her up and down. It isn’t clear if he follows what she’s implying or not. Then as the music starts up and he pulls her close again, he catches her earlobe between his teeth and bites it very lightly. “Let me be quite clear, sweetheart,” he whispers, even as his hand strokes caressingly down her back. “If you do anything, if you do anything at _all,_ in any way, intended or unintended, to hurt my darling, I shall _tear you apart._ You have heard of the heads upon London Bridge, I presume? Your own is welcome to join them, your limbs staked above every gate in the city, your entrails scattered for the ravens on Tower Green. Make no mistake, you are a lovely woman and I should hate very much to do it, but if you have in mind any mischief to Garcia – or to my son – I shall not hesitate an instant. Not one.”

A chill goes through Lucy from head to heel, as she has no reason to doubt that he means every word of it. She is reminded of her constant state of being around Gabriel – dangerously attracted to him, but also just as frightened, knowing that he is only a half-tame lion and in no way suitable to be carelessly approached. His eyes are dead black, devoid of any humor or flirtation or teasing, and when the dance ends, she kisses him quickly and is in a hurry to get away from him. She hopes this isn’t furtherly suspicious, but the evening has not been very fun, she’s still hungry, and desperately hopes that they can leave. She wades through the morass, finds Flynn, and grabs his elbow. “Can we please…?”

He looks at her, seems to decide that the need to get her out of here outweighs whatever social affront they would cause, and nods. He forages off to make proper farewells to the Pembrokes, returns, and takes hold of her protectively, leading her out into the night, which is a slap of blessedly cool and almost fresh air after the heat and crush of the dance. As they wait for their carriage, he says in an undertone, “Are you all right? I saw you with Gabriel.”

“Yes, he…” Lucy’s head is about to split, and she doesn’t want to explain it right now. Her legs feel like jelly, and as Karl drives up, Flynn has to physically lift her in. “He wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“I’ll think of something to say,” Flynn says. “I don’t know what, but I have to.”

“Mmm.” Lucy leans against his shoulder, and is about to close her eyes. But for a second, before the door closes, she has the oddest feeling that she sees something – someone – standing in the shadows under the portcullis. It is hooded and cloaked, putting her in mind of the person she saw outside the inn that first Sunday morning, the one looking up directly at them. But it must just be a byproduct of her tired, bludgeoned brain, because she blinks, the door shuts, and when she looks again, it is gone as if it has never been.


	4. Nightfall

It is not a restful night. Even after they get home, the servants make Lucy something she can actually eat (they have worried that her health might suffer without enough sugar, but want to accommodate her peculiar foreign tastes) and Flynn carries her up to bed, she can’t fall asleep. Frankly, it would not be a surprise if she has gone crazy enough to hallucinate menacing shadowy figures, and that, combined with the drink and the elegant threats from Gabriel and everything else, feels like a huge fist crushing her throat. She can’t breathe. It’s like when she gets shut into small spaces and her claustrophobia is triggered, but she’s not in any physical confinement. Just trapped in the goddamn sixteenth century, no big deal. She is struggling to remember why she thought this was a good idea. Something or another, protect the world. Uncover the secrets of creature origins and keep Ashmole 782 out of the hands of dangerous enemies. Save Gabriel. And yet.

Lucy gets up in the wee hours to pace, but Flynn doesn’t stir. Vampires usually don’t, even though people around here are accustomed to “first sleep” and “second sleep,” where they go to bed relatively early, wake up in the middle of the night, read or pray or have sex or do other things for a few hours, then go back to sleep until sunrise. Lucy has learned that the uninterrupted block of your recommended minimum eight hours is an invention of the industrial capitalist modern world, which seems about right. But her only option for reading is Jessica’s book, she’s not the praying type, and as for having sex –

She can tell that Flynn is trying. She really can. He was solicitously attentive all the way home, sat with her while she ate, carried her up to bed and helped her out of her sweaty, heavy clothing, and then… tucked her in and found a goblet of water to set on the sideboard (which is nice, because she doesn’t think she can stand another sip of alcohol in her life). He sat next to her atop the covers and held her hand, kissed her fingers, stroked her hair, and then slid in next to her and cuddled her. He clearly feels bad for pushing her away and essentially stonewalling her for their first week here, and Lucy is so starved for affection and care and comfort that she gratefully welcomes the volte-face. She was more than a little drunk and flying off the handle and teetering on the edge of a breakdown, it once more wasn’t a good time for anything else. But why won’t he just _talk_ to her? They could work through this if she knew what the problem was, but he has been so used to being so alone for centuries that he apparently, whatever the fuck. Thinks she can read his mind.

Lucy desists from her pacing and sits down in one of the carved armchairs, staring at the far wall. She just wants to feel like she has any part of this insane situation under control. She’s _used_ to being good at things, or at least looking like she is. You don’t get to where she is by slacking off or being unmotivated or stupid. She has lived by herself and for herself for many years, and she knows how to do that. It’s not like she’s about to lose her mind without a man or anything like that. Yet ever since Flynn turned her life upside down, it’s just felt… she hates the word, but fated, or destined, or something. Whatever it is with the two of them, this strange, delicate push-and-pull, two steps forward, three steps back. The pressure and isolation of this experience would crush anyone, and she _needs_ him. There is still the residual excitement of actually seeing and living in the past, and it’s not like Lucy wouldn’t do it again. But she can’t go on like this. Alone. Not when he said they were a team.

After a long moment, Lucy gets up, makes her way over to the bed, and crawls in next to Flynn, tucking herself against his side and pulling his arm over her. She buries her nose in his collarbone, closes her eyes and rolls on top of him; if he is once more letting her close enough to do this, she is going to take advantage of it. She wants to erase all the boundaries between them, be taken out of her weary and heavy and anxious head. She wants to be safe, and even through all the insanity, she is here, with him. That has to be enough.

Somehow, she sleeps. When she finally pries her sticky eyes open, the room is full of grey sunlight and Flynn is gone. He has refilled her water goblet and left a piece of fresh bread, and Lucy sits up slowly, munching it. She feels the residual pounding of a hangover, didn’t think she drank _that_ much, but the Rhenish was a lot on its own, there was plenty of wine at supper, and all of it is far stronger than she is used to. She winces at small noises from the house below, until the door opens a crack, and Meg peers in. “My lady? Are you awake?”

“Mmm.” Lucy rubs her temples. “Mmmawake.”

Meg makes her way in to deal with the mess, fetching a brush and sitting down on the bed to work at the rat’s nest of Lucy’s hair. “You’ll want some caudle,” she says. “I’ll brew it up for you later. And for the child, it’ll be – ”

“Look,” Lucy says, half-hysterically. “I’m not – I’m not pregnant, all right? I know you think I’m ashamed or I want to cover it up or I’m in denial, but I’m not pregnant. I’m definitely not pregnant, I’m not anything, because Garcia won’t sleep with me. He barely touches me. I know he’s trying and he did better the last few days and I know he has issues and I know what happened to his last lover and I know he’s scared of hurting me, but he – he won’t _talk_ to me, he won’t – we need to trust each other, and I do, and I feel like a horrible person for it not being enough, but I – I _want_ him and I want us to be together, _really_ together, so I just – I don’t want to hurt him either, I could do it differently than the way he could for me, but I could, and I _don’t –_ I love him, I love him so much, and that feels scary and strange and ridiculous already, but – ”

At that, she belatedly becomes aware that this is pouring out of her like vomit, that Meg potentially thinks she has also gone insane, and is not expected to act as psychologist and emotional support to her employer. But Meg takes a look at her, puts aside the brush, and says, “There, there, my lady. Shhh, now. Shhh.”

Between Meg patting her back and offering sips of water, clucking and making comforting noises, Lucy finally breaks down, cries for a few minutes, stifles her usual urge to apologize as Meg hands her a handkerchief, and wipes her eyes, sniffing. “There, there,” Meg says again. “We’ll manage it somehow, my lady. I could go to market and buy some of the Barbary spices, and put it in his food. If it inflames the blood to passion, that could – ”

“He’s a va – ” Lucy catches herself. “I mean, I’m not sure it would – ”

She stops, since frankly, dosing Flynn with an aphrodisiac sounds like their least ridiculous option right now. But she’s maintained the whole time that she wants him to want it when he is ready for it, freely given, and she’s not going to cheat with love potions, even if they wouldn’t work anyway. “No, no,” she says. “My thanks, but no.”

“I could dress your hair especially?” Meg, bless her, is still in problem-solving mode. “Or if I was to spill a cask of wine upon your bedclothes in the new chamber, so you’d still have to sleep with him until they were washed – forgiving the waste of wine, my lady, but – ”

“No.” Lucy has to laugh, despite herself. “We’ll work it out some other way, but you’re very sweet. Have you – have you ever been married?”

This is possibly too personal a question to ask the staff, but Meg doesn’t seem to find it odd. After all, no matter how rich or poor you are, you and your families have lived in the same place for generations, you go to the same churches (or at least you better) and have endured the same privations, shopped together and celebrated together and known each other’s joys and sorrows, and the class divide isn’t quite as harsh as it is in later eras. “I was, my lady,” Meg says. “His name was Thomas, he left us last year in the plague.”

“Oh.” Lucy looks down. “I’m – I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t trouble yourself. He was – not much of a loss to God’s earth, tell you true.” Meg resumes brushing Lucy’s hair. “But it’s my sister who also lost her husband, and her with the three children to raise, so I took a position to support us both. Her son is hoping for an apprenticeship to a tradesman, but the lad is scarce ten, and it will be best if he can take a few more years of schooling.” She stops, realizing that she is going on at unacceptable length about her personal life. “I’m sorry, my lady. I’ve – not had anyone to talk to in a time either.”

“I don’t mind,” Lucy says. “Really. You said your sister lived in Islington, didn’t you?”

“Aye.” Meg looks at her with burning curiosity, clearly wanting to ask where Lucy is from, but not presuming to that much familiarity. “It’s good I have the post here, now.”

“Garcia and his family are very wealthy.” Lucy doesn’t want to promise that she can open the ancestral treasure vaults, because she doesn’t know if she can, but she _is_ Lady Clairmont, at least to all appearances. “I’ll see if we can find something for you and your sister.”

Meg’s jaw drops. She hastens to assure Lucy not to trouble herself, but Lucy waves off her objections, and feels somewhat restored as Meg finishes her hair and helps her get dressed. “Where is my lord this morning, do you know?”

“He went away early again, to Sir Walter’s.” Meg pulls at the laces of Lucy’s corset. It’s not the restrictive whalebone hourglass popular among the Victorians, and is designed for everyday wear, so they don’t do it up too tightly. Outside of the frills and finery of court appearances and splendid balls, Lucy has gone for relatively ordinary clothes, a chemise and petticoats underneath a brown woolen skirt and half-sleeved jacket, an embroidered bodice and a pomander hung from her girdle, as well-bred ladies keep one on hand to chase away sudden bad smells. Her hair is covered with a French hood, though that is now starting to be rather dated, or a simple cap, and when she goes out, she wears a brimmed hat. “There’s the mending and the sewing to be done, my lady, if you’ve a hand with a needle?”

Lucy supposes that the lady of the house and her maids would often do this sort of work together, though she’s not sure she could avoid sewing her fingers together, and there are other things she needs to be doing. She goes over to Flynn’s desk and retrieves the Ashmole fragment, their precious guidebook with the list of places and names, and smooths it out, to see where they should go next. Except then she thinks that she must have grabbed a spare piece. Inexplicably, horrifyingly – the page is blank.

“Wh – ” Lucy panics, double-checks it, paws through the papers, and turns it over, as if the text might have escaped to the other side. It was fine the other day, when they used it to find Middleton’s bookstore. Maybe the locking charm has reset itself? When she translated it back in Sept-Tours, it instructed her to reveal the rest of the message with the omega, so she presses the faint raised scar on her palm to the paper. It has mostly faded, along with the ones on her back, after an intensive course of Michelle’s healing magic before they left the present, but she hopes for another burn and jolt. Nothing. The page stays blank.

Lucy shakes it, though this is like hitting a malfunctioning piece of technology to get it to work again. Then she pulls out the alchemical wedding page with its sumptuous illumination, and gets another shock. Most of the design is still there, the elaborate border and decoration and drawing, but the faces of the white queen and the red king have vanished, and their names are no longer written beneath their feet. It used to be Lucy and Flynn beyond a doubt, but now both of them have gone, and it is two abstract, unspecified, half-finished figures instead. What the _hell –_?

Lucy stares down at the pages, trying to work out if this is an unforeseen consequence of time travel, if bringing them to a moment before they existed has messed with the deep and delicate magic they are imbued with. She thought they would be preserved as relics from a different time stream, their continued existence already established as separate from their moment of creation, and thus far they have been. But if they aren’t written _now,_ they won’t be written in the _future,_ and –

Just to be sure, she checks again, trying to fight off panic. She was relying on that list, they both were, to tell them where to go and what to do. Why didn’t she make a copy, write it down somewhere else? She could probably remember some of it if she tried, but if they’ve gone, does that mean the circumstances that led to them being written down have changed as well? Would it even be where they still need to go, or – or what?”

“My lady?” Meg says, taking note of Lucy’s incipient terror. “Are you well?”

“I just…” Lucy is pretty sure she can’t explain this one. “These papers. I’m sure you haven’t – and nobody else in the household has touched them, have they?”

“No, my lady.” Meg looks puzzled. “We do not go through my lord’s things. At least, so it has always been before, unless the household is most different here?”

“Not that different,” Lucy mutters. She can’t see the impeccably upright and correct Parry snooping through Flynn’s private papers, and she would be able to tell if there was unfamiliar or hostile magic in the room. Besides, if someone had physically been _in_ here, you’d hope she’d notice that. She shoots a sudden, suspicious glance at Jessica’s book, which is lying a few feet away. Is there a dark spell of some kind embedded in its pages, working slowly to corrode the magic of the papers, or perhaps –

Forgetting her anxieties about reading it, Lucy picks it up and flips it open. It does look like an ordinary history of Venice up until the mid-fifteenth century, composed in an authentic period style. No spells are to be detected in its pages, and none of the text moves or erases itself. But at the very back, Lucy notices a section “writ by the kinde permissions & with the use of the Library of his Maiestie _MATTHIAS CORVINUS,_ Kynge of Hungary & the Dalmatian Landes.”

Oh, hell. Matthias Corvinus. They sent Past Flynn on a wild-goose chase to find his supposedly rediscovered lost library, which vanished in 1526, but in 1484, it hasn’t vanished yet. In 1484, Matthias is still alive and still king, so is Jessica (was Jessica?) at his court? Is there some way she can interfere with Past Flynn, even separated by a hundred years? Even if not, Jessica has taken shelter with the Raven King, whose library contains many rare and magical books unknown to creatures today. If Temple tracks her there – and this is pretty much a gilded invitation to do it – he can pillage it like a kid in a candy store.

Lucy puts the book down, trying to remember to breathe. Even if it didn’t erase the Ashmole pages, it very definitely means other problems. After a final check has proven that the pages are still blank – indeed, more of the paint seems to have vanished off the alchemical wedding, as if it will slowly dissolve like the Beast’s rose losing petals, until they are out of time and the spell has broken – Lucy puts it back and tries to think what to do. She would almost welcome another summons to the palace, since it might give her a chance to talk with Elizabeth privately. Or –

No. It is probably a bad idea to initiate any closer contact with a clearly jealous and dangerous Gabriel, even if Lucy is quite sure that they can’t proceed by ignoring him. But Gabriel knows everybody in London, on intimate terms or otherwise, and maybe if they tried to include him, he wouldn’t suspect her of being some nefarious femme fatale bamboozling Flynn. His acquaintances certainly include creatures apart from Kit, and while Lucy needs to be very careful about who she entrusts with this information, maybe they can at least explain a few things. She turns to Meg. “Could you get one of the grooms to take a message to Lord Gabriel de Clermont? My lord’s brother.”

Meg briefly looks as if she is going to say something, remembers it is not her place, and nods. “What message exactly, my lady?”

“Just say that – ” Lucy tries to think how to phrase this without it sounding like a proposition, or if Gabriel would assume that either way. “That I would appreciate the chance to speak with him, if he finds himself at leisure.”

She imagines that Gabriel has probably been at leisure in someone’s bed, whether Kit’s or Mary Sidney’s or anyone else’s, but the messenger is dispatched to shake down London for him, and Lucy, in the name of being conscientious, starts going through Jessica’s book page by page. She still hasn’t found anything else when, after almost an hour, the bedchamber door bangs and the circus arrives. This morning, Gabriel is dressed splendidly in black velvet and scarlet brocade, sleeves slashed with ivory silk and jewels dripping off his hat, fingers, and throat. He is sporting a little pearl earring, has lined his eyes with kohl, and white fur trims his cloak. Lucy wonders if it’s ermine – only royalty has the exclusive right to wear ermine, and the fourteenth-century sumptuary laws, dictating which fabrics and adornments can be worn by each class of society, are still regularly enforced. His tight silk hose shows off his extremely well-turned legs, and the doublet is cut to flatter his long, lean figure. “My darling,” he says, speaking accented English, rather than French. “What a surprise to have you call for me in your hour of need. Has my disappointing brother abandoned you again?”

“He – no, he…” Lucy is not quite sure what to say after their fraught encounter last night. Gabriel looks fresh as a daisy, not that vampires need the accustomed amount of sleep, and the party has most likely never stopped. “Never mind. I had a question.”

“Oh?” Gabriel sits down carelessly on the bed and sweeps off his hat, watching her with those sharp dark eyes. Underneath the flirtation, he is tense and poised to spring, and Lucy keeps her distance. “What exactly about, my sugarplum?”

“If someone had questions about… magical matters.” Considering her experiences with witches in the present, Lucy is not in haste to recruit more of them, apart from Agnes Sampson, and she won’t arrive for several more days at least. “Fellow creatures. You said yesterday that you were trying to introduce me to society, so…”

“You are interested in another _soiree?”_ Gabriel chuckles. “Well, you needn’t contrive and conspire to enjoy my company, my dearest. We are family, surely we should come to better know one another. But as for other beings, is that wise?”

“I know Kit is a daemon,” Lucy says carefully. “And the two of you are… friends. But who is in charge of the London creatures? Vampires and witches?”

Gabriel continues to study her, judging if he should let slip this information or not. Then he shrugs, seems to decide that it’s common knowledge and she could discover it anyway – and if he tells her, she will owe him a favor. “The vampires of London are oft ruled by Father Andrew Hubbard. An uncheery fellow, a Calvinist in life, and just as dismal now that he is dead. I suspect he took it personally that he was clearly not destined for heaven. Because I immensely dislike him, I have until now refrained from informing him of your presence, as he would hold strong notions on your marriage. Yet I do suspect that after the events of the last few days, the word shall spread.”

Lucy tries to think if that name sounds familiar for any other reason. “And the witches?”

Gabriel lifts a glittering shoulder in an insolent shrug. “Should I have any notion?”

“You know everyone,” Lucy points out. “So yes.”

“True, true, I am very knowledgeable about many things.” Gabriel gives her a darkly promising look under his eyelashes, affecting to study his fingernails. He stretches ostentatiously, once reminding her of a self-satisfied cat, and then says, “The witches of London are in a coven under one Lady Mary Beaton, a former attendant of the Queen of Scots. The creatures of London work much like the guilds, you know. You cannot merely come to the city and expect to take up without making proper application. She will be angered that you have not. Surely you would know that, my sweet?”

“Things are – different,” Lucy says feebly. “Garcia has not mentioned it, I didn’t think – ”

“Oh, because Garcia is such a fount of information?” Gabriel gets to his feet fast enough to make her flinch. “And yet by all rights, he should have told me about you. We keep nothing from each other, no secret. But you still remain so mysterious, pet. _Why?”_

He practically snarls the last word, is on the very edge of her personal space, and Lucy resists the urge to back down. Like his brother, he is tall enough that it strains her neck to look up at him. As truthfully as she can, she says, “I had a question about some strange magic.”

Gabriel considers that. Then he takes another step, bringing them still closer. “What exactly did you do with my son? Mysterious errands to Scotland, was it? One Scottish witch was not sufficient for your purposes?”

“Garcia sent him to Scotland,” Lucy says, truthfully enough. Her legs are quivering and her mouth is dry, but she doesn’t want to give any ground. She won Gabriel’s grudging respect in the present by refusing to be intimidated, and while it’s exasperating to do it again, when she just made headway with the first one, at least she has some sort of playbook. “I promise, the last thing either of us want to do is to hurt him. He’s helping you.”

“Neither you nor my brother will tell me what sort of help you fancy that to be.” Gabriel’s voice is cool, but genuine pain lurks beneath. “He has not seemed at all like himself since he returned with you. I know something is wrong, but he will not _talk_ to me.”

Lucy experiences a brief and unexpected moment of solidarity. “If it helps,” she says, “he’s not talking to me either.”

“Foolish dolt. I wonder sometimes why I love him so.” Gabriel shrugs. “Shall we seize him together, do you think? Shake him until he gives in?”

This is a tempting offer for more than one reason, but Lucy shakes her head. She might be pushing her luck to ask for another favor, but at least he hasn’t actually torn her limbs off yet, and it will take her longer to do this any other way. “Do you happen to have the London address for Mistress Beaton?”

Gabriel hesitates a moment longer, then says, “She keeps a house in the city, near Cornhill and the Royal Exchange. It would not be decorous for myself to be spotted there, and besides, I have far better things to accomplish upon the day than playing footman to a witch, even one so lovely as you, sweet sister. Was there any other way I could service you, or shall I be off?”

“No,” Lucy says. “Thank you.”

Gabriel seems to think of several other suggestive things he could say, but he bows instead, showing himself out with a flourish. When he’s gone, Lucy summons Meg back and gets changed for visiting. Then, hoping that this isn’t a big mistake, she once more sets out with her maid under the stout stick guardianship of Karl, heading into the city.

It takes them a while to find Mary Beaton’s residence among the many townhouses that border the Exchange, and they knock on the door to be sniffily informed that the mistress is having dinner and is not receiving callers. However, when Lucy lets slip that she is Lady Clairmont, the servant tells them to wait, retreats for several minutes, and then finally returns. “This way, prithee.”

Lucy was hoping that her notoriety – she’s probably the talk of the entire city by now – would arouse curiosity, and that seems to have worked. Meg and Karl follow her down a narrow, twisting, dark-paneled corridor to the dining room at the back of the house, where the head of the London coven is taking her midday meal. She is fair, plump, and pretty, probably in her late forties, and Lucy, who has never had much to do with other witches outside the Christopher family, feels her spine stiffen in instinctive wariness. Lady Beaton looks like someone’s kindly aunt, but her dark gaze is shrewd and calculating. She performs that head-to-toe flick that Lucy is getting used to from everyone, then says, “Ah, Lady Clairmont. I heard ‘twas quite an entertainment last night.”

She speaks with a noted Scottish accent, a reminder that as a former attendant of her executed mistress, Elizabeth’s cousin and rival, she does not fit entirely easily into London society either. She makes a careless gesture, and one of her footmen steps forward to pull out a chair for Lucy, who sinks into it. The two witches stare at each other, as Meg and Karl retreat to stand in the corner. Then Lady Beaton says, “Why have ye sought me out, then? Or rather, why did ye not before? Ye ken the laws, Lady Clairmont, do ye no?”

Her tone is not particularly angry, but she plainly regards her rights as having been breached, and Lucy tries to think how to answer. It’s not clear that ignorance will excuse her, even if it is the case. Instead, she says, “It has been a difficult several days settling into London, my lady, and I confess, I was not aware of the protocol until just recently. As soon as I heard of it, I came to pay court to you. I – before – Her Majesty – ”

Lady Beaton’s mouth twists at the mention of Elizabeth, who she must bear no small grudge against. “Oh, aye,” she says cuttingly. “Ever the old harlot must make a spoil of our plans. Well, ye are here now, I shall give ye so much as that. What it was you wished to say?”

Lucy casts an awkward look at Meg. She is bonding with her, but Meg doesn’t know that she is an actual witch, and openly visiting a Scottish traitoress who just called the queen a whore might already be pushing it. Taking the hint, Meg nods and withdraws, pulling a somewhat reluctant Karl with her. Once they are alone, Lucy says, “My – my nephew has gone to search out one of your sisters in Scotland. Agnes Sampson.”

“Oh, aye. I ken auld Agnes.” Lady Beaton continues to regard her keenly. “What is it you want with her, exactly?”

“It’s difficult to explain,” Lucy says. “But we think she might be able to help us contact an ancestress of mine, another witch with a rare gift.”

“Is that so?” Lady Beaton looks like a spider finding a juicy insect in its web. “And what would the name of this witch be, exactly?”

Lucy hesitates, but she is at least nominally among her own kind here. “Amelie Wallis.”

“I’ve ne’er heard of the woman.” Lady Beaton turns back to her interrupted dinner. “Many other Wallises and Wallaces among the Scots, to be sure, but no witch of that name.”

“She is…” Lucy still doesn’t trust Lady Beaton, exactly, but she doesn’t have a sense that she will rush to inform on her to other creatures, and if they never ask anyone anything, no matter the risks, they are never going to get anywhere. “Not born yet.”

That, at last, catches the older witch’s full attention. She almost chokes on her chicken, and washes it down hastily with malmsey. A considering, excited gleam appears in her eye. “Ah, Lady Clairmont. Ye are a timewalker, are ye no? Traveled here from another year?”

It’s so much of a relief to have someone immediately understand that she’s not from around now that Lucy almost rushes to confirm it. She manages to hold herself back from being too demonstrative, but she nods. “Yes.”

“When?” Lady Beaton looks her up and down. “From the future, I’d reckon?”

“Yes.” Lucy is hungry, and wonders if she’s about to be offered anything to eat – or if it would be a wise idea to take it. “Amelie Wallis is my ancestress, but she’s not born until about thirty years from now, in Essex. We think Agnes may be able to contact her.”

“Agnes does have some skill with timewalking, aye,” Lady Beaton allows. “Ne’er managed to work it herself, but she oft receives visits from those passing through from other eras. Ye would not be the first to seek her out for such services. Ye said ye sent your nephew?”

“Yes. Well, my husband’s nephew, but now mine.”

“Your husband.” It is clear that Lady Beaton was waiting to reach this topic. “Lord Clairmont. Is he no a vampire?”

Lucy can’t exactly deny this. “He – is, my lady, yes. But we know and trust each other, and our minds are one in all things.”

“Vampires are naught but trouble,” Lady Beaton says dismissively (and not inaccurately). “Ye will come to no good end with that one. If ye insist, I can send a message to Agnes to be on the lookout for your nephew, but I would need to ken the boy’s name.”

Lucy hesitates. This is a powerful thing to give to a witch, especially one who doesn’t think much of vampires, and when they’re so determined not to get Christian into any extra trouble. “Could you just not tell her to await a visitation?”

Lady Beaton gives her a slant-eyed smile, catching the reluctance. “Ye needna think I’ll order the lad chopped up and stewed,” she says. “But it does a body good to be wary.”

Lucy can’t deny this, especially since Agnes is about to be accused and arrested later this year. Feeling a sudden pang of fear that Gabriel would in fact dismember her if he knew she had given this up, she says, “Christian de Clermont.”

Lady Beaton considers that, then gives a short nod. “Aye, then, I’ll make that known, and Agnes can do as she will. What else was it ye wished to ask me?”

“If a witch timewalks into the past,” Lucy says, “and brings items from her original time – magical items, that is – would they change? If it was traveling back to before they were created, would they start to disappear?”

“It depends.” Lady Beaton looks at her shrewdly. “What items precisely d’ye mean?”

Hoping that this is likewise not a mistake, Lucy fishes in her sleeve for the blank Ashmole page – after all, it looks like a piece of scrap parchment, it isn’t immediately incriminating. She spreads it out on the table. “This. When we left – my year, it was a part of a manuscript, it had writing on it. This morning, I saw that the writing had disappeared. Another page that we brought, an illustration, is beginning to vanish as well.”

“That would take rare strong magic.” Lady Beaton touches the parchment. Her fingers flick with a small, sparking spell, as if she’s trying to boot a dead car battery, but nothing happens. “Or otherwise the magic is being undone, unraveled, attacked by some outside force. Have ye met other witches besides myself, Lady Clairmont?”

“No. Or at least nobody that I know of.” Lucy racks her brains to think if anyone could have gotten to the parchment, but after that scare back at the inn, when they discovered someone had been pawing through their things, Flynn has kept them with him, or close by. Or was that the crucial breach? Did person or person(s) unknown get to the pages and lay some kind of undetectable enchantment? Is the information being siphoned off this page to a copy elsewhere, so their unknown enemy has the benefit of it and not them? There are all sorts of possibilities. None of them seem like a good thing.

“Hmm. Well. I’d need to look at this more, see what happened.” Lady Beaton lays a casual hand on the scrap. “Perhaps ye would consent to leave it with me?”

Lucy doesn’t imagine that Flynn would think very much of letting an unknown witch, the leader of the London coven, have unsupervised access to one of their precious Ashmole fragments, blank or not. “I’m sorry, not just now.”

Lady Beaton gives her one of those looks again, clearly aware that they don’t fully trust each other. Then she says abruptly, “Are ye of a mind at all to be taught, Lady Clairmont? Ye are a strong witch, if ye can timewalk, but your magic is… unformed, raw, amateur. How is it that ye come to be fully grown, and yet so little in command of it?”

“My parents…” Lucy looks down at the table. “My parents spellbound me, when I was a child. I only recently had it removed.”

“Spellbound?” Lady Beaton echoes. “That is a cruel thing to do to a child, especially one of your talents. It’s ordinarily a punishment for the fearful and the dangerous and the insane, those who canna be trusted with their powers, rather than to imprison an innocent babe inside herself. Why would your own kindred do such a thing to you?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy’s voice catches. “I still haven’t figured out what they wanted with me, or – or what I’m working on.”

Lady Beaton eyes her thoughtfully, and not without sympathy. “I could teach ye,” she says again. “Ye’ve a fine amount of good clay to be molded, Lady Clairmont, and I’ve enough leisure these days, it’s time I found an occupation again. What do ye say?”

It’s clear that this offer is extended at least partly because she finds Lucy intriguing, useful, and possibly dangerous, and this is a convenient way to keep an eye on her and discover the extent of her abilities. Even so, Lucy isn’t sure that she should turn it down. It’s true that she does need help refining her powers – she has managed several large-scale feats, not least getting herself and Flynn to 1590, but she doesn’t know to get them back, or everything else that a witch properly accustomed to her magic would know. And besides, if Lady Beaton was keeping an eye on her, she could also keep an eye on Lady Beaton. “It is a gracious offer,” she says. “Perhaps we could come to an accommodation.”

“Wise.” Lady Beaton reaches for the sideboard, tinkles a silver bell, and one of her footmen appears. “Dinner for Lady Clairmont,” she orders. “Do ye drink red or white?”

Lucy does not want any more wine, ever, but accepts white to be polite, and hence finds herself eating after all. Once they finish, Lady Beaton shows her to a study and workroom lined with books, and it seems that lessons are about to start on the spot. Lucy feels a bit like Harry on his first day at Hogwarts, and wonders how much of this is still applicable to how modern witches learn – there are a lot of star charts and esoteric diagrams and reliance on the theory of the humors and other considerably outdated wisdom. But at least it’s interesting, and the afternoon rushes past. It’s May, so when it starts getting dark, that means it’s past nine o’clock PM, the curfew will be calling, and Flynn must be frantic. “Oh no,” Lucy says. “Oh no, I need to get home. I’m so sorry, I completely lost track of time.”

She heads out to Meg and Karl, who have been stuck here for hours and were probably wondering if she vanished off the face of the earth, apologizes profusely, and begs Lady Beaton’s pardons. The older witch is very keen about inviting her to return the next day, and Lucy promises that she’ll be back soon. Then she pulls on her cloak, and steps outside.

It’s dark enough that Karl improvises a torch, and as they make their way among the narrow, winding lanes, Lucy has the unsettling sensation that something is following them. Not some _one;_ the cadence of the footsteps doesn’t sound right, not exactly human. It seems to switch between the ground and the air, as if the thing can both fly and walk, and as they pass a shopkeeper closing up for the night, it swoops overhead with a rustling sound. It’s large enough to cast a shadow, and Meg looks up, frowning. “What was that?”

“We should keep going,” Karl says. “Faster, if you don’t mind.”

They all pick up the pace, glancing over their shoulders, as the skittering, rustling sound gets louder. They take a wrong turn among the identical alleys, fetch up against a dead end heaped with sacks and wagon wheels, and have to double back. Karl knows these streets, it seems unlike him to get lost, but a fine fog is rising up from nowhere, making the torch sputter, gutter, and then go out. Lucy raises her hand, intending to conjure witchfire both for illumination and protection – they are not alone, there is something here, near at hand and hungry, she can feel it – and then she sees the cloaked figure, the one that she spotted outside the inn and then at the Pembrokes’ party the other night. It is charging full-speed toward them but making not a single sound, horribly light and lithe and weightless, and under the hood, she can see an opening maw of twisting, gnarled teeth.

All three of them let out undignified screams and run for it. Lucy and Meg grabs hands, trying to avoid being separated, while Karl whacks madly at the nightmarish ghoul with his stick. But none of the blows seem to land, or if they do, they don’t deter it. They run faster, Karl shouting and swearing as the figure clamps onto his shoulders like a huge eagle and seems about to bite him, but Lucy manages to get the witchfire working and scrapes it off with a well-aimed missile. It’s clear from the look on Karl’s face that he wasn’t expecting her not to roast him instead, but there is no time for explicit gratitude. He stumbles up toward the women, Lucy hits the monster with another fireball, and it shrieks, falling back. There’s a rush of smoke, a smell like carrion or rotting corpses, and then it’s gone.

Gagging, shaken, and badly startled, Lucy, Meg, and Karl manage to make it the rest of the way back to the Old Lodge without another attack. When they arrive, they find the place alive with shouting and banging, the household armed with lanterns and truncheons, clearly about to go in search of them. A white-faced Flynn jostles his way to the front of the crowd, sees them, sees Lucy, and doesn’t need to ask if something happened. He seizes her in both arms, lifting her off her feet, crushing her against him. “Jesus. Jesus! What – where – ”

Lucy wants to tell him that it’s a long story, and that she was just chased home by some kind of terrifying bird-monster- _thing,_ but she is at a loss for words, and clings to him instead. Flynn kisses her in frantic relief, clearly so terrified that Lucy feels some of her residual irritation with him dissipating. “I’m all right,” she manages, between more kisses. “I’m – Garcia, I’m all right. Really.”

“I’m sorry.” Flynn does not put her down. “I was late with Raleigh, I didn’t get home myself until half an hour ago. When I realized you still weren’t back – and I just – something was wrong, I felt it. What just – ”

“I’m all right,” Lucy says again, as he swings her over his chest bridal-style and clears a path. The household looks relieved that she isn’t dead, at any rate, and as he did last night, Flynn carries her upstairs and into their room. “I was – ”

She stops. It has, to say the least, been an eventful day, and she isn’t sure where to start. They stare at each other, her on the bed where Flynn has deposited her and him standing across from her, towering like a colossus. Then he turns to light the candles, as Lucy struggles to get out of her skirts and bodice. She can’t manage the corset, though, and this doesn’t feel like the moment to invite her maid into the marital bedchamber. “Garcia, can you – ”

He glances over his shoulder, and briefly hesitates. Then he comes over, climbs onto the bed behind her, and economically unlaces it, as she shrugs it off and lets out a relieved breath. Flynn remains where he is, head bent over hers, his hands on her waist; she’s afraid to move too much, in case he realizes it and suddenly pulls away. Then he says, “What was that thing?”

“I don’t know. But I think it was that thing I saw outside the inn, on that first Sunday here. That hooded figure, I saw it the other night when we were leaving the Pembrokes’ ball. It attacked us.”

Flynn’s hands have been making absent circles on her hips, but at that, they go still. There’s a pause. Then he says, “Where were you out so late?”

“I went to visit Lady Beaton.” Lucy wonders if this name will be familiar; she assumes it is. “Gabriel told me about her. I had questions about what happened to the Ashmole fragment – and then Jessica, I mean Jessica’s book, there was a section about Corvinus, I think she may have ended up there, and then – ”

 _“What?”_ Flynn’s hands tighten abruptly. “What are you talking about?”

Lucy turns around to face him and is obliged to recount the day’s multiple troubling developments from the start. It takes a while, and Flynn’s brows draw into a darker and darker frown, but he doesn’t interrupt. Then he says, “The papers are disappearing? _And_ you took them to an unfamiliar witch who might have all kinds of intentions about – ”

“You know.” Lucy lifts her eyes pointedly to his face. “If you weren’t already gone when I woke up this morning, and weren’t spending all day and evening with Walter Raleigh, maybe  I would have been able to tell you.”

Flynn flinches. He can’t exactly deny that. “You know that we have to – ”

“Yes, I know we have to figure out what the School of Night has to do with this. That isn’t the problem, Garcia. You know it’s not. Please.” Lucy lifts her hands, putting them on his shoulders. He’s in one of those billowy white shirts that look particularly good on handsome men, and his muscles are tense where she touches him. “I’m not going to be angry, I’m not going to blame you, I promise. But you need to _talk to me.”_

He remains hunched, defensive, for another moment, until his chest rattles with a sigh. “You’re right,” he says. “I just – my last relationship was two hundred and fifty years ago, and it destroyed my entire family. Every time I see Gabriel, every time I see Christian, the way they used to be, the way _we_ used to be, I’m reminded of that. And before that, there was only that affair with Eleanor, all the way back until when my human wife was murdered. I am not good at this. I’m too used to being alone. I don’t even talk to my own daughter, you’ve seen for yourself what a farce of a relationship we have. It’s just. . . not my instinct to share with anyone, even if I love them. I’m – I’m sorry, _moja ljubav._ Truly.”

Since that’s the first time he’s called her that since they arrived in London, Lucy looks up at him hopefully, and he lowers his head, eyes weary and sad and gentle, and kisses her. She kisses him back, hands in his tousled hair, and when they pull back, she says, “I know. I know, Garcia. Like I said, I’m not angry. I’m just. . . hurt.”

“I didn’t mean that. I never did.” He brushes his mouth over her nose, the side of her cheek, her ear, soft, worshipful little ghost-kisses. “You’re brave, you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, and I’m so proud of everything you’re doing. Earlier, when I – I just knew something was wrong, you were in danger, and I thought – I thought – ”

Lucy cuts him off with another kiss, and his hands grip her shoulders, almost engulfing them, pulling her convulsively closer. She ends up in his lap, the two of them with their arms draped over each other, and her heart trembles a little at how much she wants, she needs, she _adores_ this tall, oblivious, awkward, stubborn, emotionally incompetent, eternally devoted idiot. She leans forward, and they nuzzle noses, then kiss again. She tugs on him, trying to urge him to push her down, but he stops, frowning. “The alchemical wedding page. You said it was fading out. That it used to have our faces and names, but now it doesn’t.”

“Yes,” Lucy says, laughing a little in fond exasperation that he’s thinking about this, even when he was supposed to be kissing her. “I don’t know what it means, but – ”

“So it can be changed,” Flynn says, as if piecing through a difficult arithmetic problem. “It wasn’t destined to be us all along. It could have been someone else. It could still _be_ someone else. It’s not some immutable witch prophecy.”

“No.” Lucy hadn’t thought of it like that. Given how leery he has been about the possibility of this exact thing, she wonders if this might qualify as an unexpected bright side. “So we’re not trapped by it. If it becomes that again, it’s because we chose it to be that way.”

Flynn doesn’t answer, but his shoulders rattle again with a massive sigh of relief. He then proceeds to kiss her with considerable gusto, and they end up with him on his back and Lucy on top of him, as she nibbles at his collarbone through the open neck of his shirt. She doesn’t want to bite him too hard, since that set off his freak-out last time, but it seems to bring it to mind anyway. Once more, he stops, because only Garcia Flynn de Clermont can comprehensively overthink making out with the woman he loves. “Lucy, I don’t – ”

“You don’t want this, or you don’t something else?” Lucy is breathless, flushed, her hair tumbling in her eyes, and as she is only in her chemise and petticoat, it would not be difficult to remove the rest of it. But after all the other false starts in this direction, she would prefer to be clear. “Is this about what happened that last night, when you surprised me?”

“That, and. . .” Flynn swallows hard, his hand stroking over her hip. “When vampires mate, when it’s more than just dating, when it becomes permanent, it. . . there’s a change. It’s more than an emotional state, it. . . attunes me to you differently. It alters something in my blood, in my brain. In some ways, it can be like after a vampire is first turned. There’s a. . . hunger.”

“Hunger for what?”

“For whatever pleasure can be found.” Flynn rolls over, half on top of her, with his weight braced on his elbows. “An intense need to feed and to – well, to fuck. We’ve only ever mated with other vampires as long as anyone can remember, and as I said, there is not much reliable evidence, if any, of what happens when we mate with other creatures. I’m just not sure it’s a good state for me, or us, to be in.”

“Does it just happen with sex?” That seems a little wrong to Lucy, but she’s not up to speed on creature idiosyncrasies. “What – what happened with Matej?”

She doesn’t want to hit him with traumatic memories, but from what everyone has said about how much Flynn was devoted to his murdered lover, an eighteenth-century Prussian army captain, surely this question must have come up before. Flynn grimaces at the name, but he can clearly understand the point of asking. “It doesn’t just happen with sex, or otherwise Gabriel would have mated with most of recorded history. It’s more than that, it’s a separate thing. With Matej, we – we planned to do it after Cecilia had turned him into a vampire. Then it would have been the same as any other.”

“So if it’s not a result of sex directly,” Lucy says, “couldn’t we just – ”

“You’re different.” Flynn’s hand strokes down her back, coming to rest on her ass. “Something strange happens when we’ve been together as much as we have, so I don’t know if it might be out of our control. I’ve never mated as a vampire, I don’t know what it could do to me. We don’t have time for me to be focused on nothing but you for – I don’t know how long, it could be up to a month before the effect subsides. You’re not a vampire, you can’t spend a month like that. And I want to make sure you only choose what you want, and that you can stop it. Vampire mating is permanent. You can have a civil or a religious marriage ceremony, if you want, but it doesn’t matter. You’re bound to the other, you’re spouses and partners in supernatural law, and the only way it usually ends is with death.”

Lucy takes a moment to consider that. “So,” she says wryly. “Vampires haven’t invented divorce?”

“You can separate, if you want,” Flynn says. “You can live apart. But generally, no. You don’t, you _can’t_ take another mate if your previous one is living. You know we’re a bunch of archaic old bastards. Just look at the Covenant. There’s no way our laws are current with the times. And I just – I’m afraid that this – that you – ”

He stops, staring into the distance with a troubled expression, even as his hand continues to trace circles on her back. As usual, he is not good enough with words to precisely articulate the nature of his fear, but Lucy can sense that he is afraid – this sweet, sweet, _stupid_ man – of accidentally marrying her, spending a month determined to sex her brains out and/or feed on her, and having to live together for the rest of eternity. That is not to make light of it. It is obviously a huge life decision, Flynn has never experienced it and has no prerequisite to warn her about, they don’t have a month to run off and bang around the clock, and Lucy can’t keep up with him in terms of stamina. It might stop being fun if she was run ragged, drained dry, and just as when he was worried about the alchemical wedding, Flynn doesn’t want her to be trapped too quickly into anything she can’t get out of. They still have not known each other that long. Marriage would not even be on the table in an ordinary relationship, and Lucy _does_ love him and wants very much to be together, but she can understand the need to take it carefully. But does that mean, due to whatever stupid ancient rules are governing this, that she can’t have sex without getting married? Fuck directly out of here with that Mormon-vampire nonsense, thank you very much. They are going to figure this out.

“Well,” Lucy says. “I’m glad you told me. What does mating involve, exactly?”

“It…” She can sense Flynn’s embarrassment. “Well, it involves drinking from a vein above the heart, and it is often accompanied by other kinds of, uh, penetration. Both partners do it, and then feed at the same time. I don’t actually know the full ritual, I was going to…” After a long pause, he says, “I was going to ask my father.”

“Ah.” Lucy shifts her position, curling up more comfortingly atop him. “Your parents – Asher and Maria – they were mated, I imagine?”

“Yes. And I saw the way my mother has been ever since he died. I just – with you, not – not after Matej. I can’t do that again. I can’t possibly.”

Lucy turns her head to kiss Flynn’s cheek. She wants to say that he’s not going to lose her, that she’s not going anywhere, that she won’t get killed, but she can’t promise anything she can’t be sure of. They are on the brink of a more-than-mortal war, if it has not already started, and there are plenty of mundane things that can kill her here in Tudor London. The question of whether she might become a vampire herself is another one for much later, and she wonders if any witch has ever been turned before. If interspecies fraternization is against the Covenant, that definitely would be. And while older vampires like Flynn and his family can live much like ordinary people, albeit with the periodic need to drink human blood to survive, by all accounts the life of a new fledgling is nothing to envy. You’re helpless as a baby, in blind thrall to the thirst and need to feed, vulnerable to the old superstitions like sunlight and holy water and crucifixes, barely in control of yourself. When Flynn was first turned, he went on a murder spree lasting several centuries. Lucy hopes that she won’t (although there are definitely some second reviewers, chairs of academic search committees, and anonymous commenters she might like to get a chomp of), but the idea of losing herself and her sanity possibly for years, torn from her old life and her work and her family… she loves Flynn. She does. But she doesn’t know if she’s ready to do that, just for him.

“If you don’t know the full ritual,” she says instead, “you can’t do it by accident, can you? I think the alchemical wedding, _if_ that is what’s happening when we’re together, is something different. We’ll be careful. But can we experiment? I promise, you didn’t hurt me the last time. You just startled me. And I won’t bite without asking, the same way you don’t bite without asking me. I know I’m not a vampire, but still. Same rules for both of us.”

Flynn looks at her, his eyes soft with tenderness, as he cups her face and strokes her cheek with his thumb. _“Moja ljubav,”_ he murmurs again, voice low and gravelly in his chest. “You are such a wonder to me, you know. I don’t know how, but you are.”

“What does that mean, what you call me?” Lucy lowers her mouth to the tip of his nose and kisses it. “Is that – Croatian?”

“Yes. My native language, though the version I originally learned was much older. There are many dialects, I will explain later. But it means _my love._ ” He leans up to kiss her. “And you are, all right? You are.”

Lucy’s chest feels warm and white and flooded, full and fragile, as she nuzzles against him. They lie there in silence for a while, before they climb off, change properly, rearrange, and then crawl into bed again. They curl up tenderly in each other’s arms, and go to sleep.

Unfortunately, the next several days are packed enough for them to almost forget about this plan altogether (so, not that much different from any other stressed, busy people living in London and vainly trying to find time to be intimate). The episode of the disappearing Ashmole pages has taught Lucy a lesson about writing things down, so she pays another visit to the stationer’s and buys a blank book, whereupon she starts a journal. It feels good to vent to something, even if just by pen and paper, about the ongoing insanity that is her life. She also carefully records all their work and any leads they have, and as such, keeps the journal under the strictest lock and key. She is well aware that if Jessica’s book could be used as an unwanted guidebook by the future, so could this. She’ll have to destroy it when she’s done.

Meanwhile, Flynn wants to track down whatever creepy ghouls are lurking in the streets after dark, and Lucy ends up in the extremely delicate position of trying to balance competing social engagements with Queen Elizabeth and Lady Beaton. To say the least, one would be extremely unimpressed if they knew that she was consorting with the other, and Lucy constantly has to monitor what she says, just to be sure. She has a heart attack at the first invitation from the Queen, as she has crammed in only two books of the _Satires,_ but when she arrives at Whitehall, Elizabeth mostly wants to play cards, drink port-wine, and complain about men, in which pursuit Lucy can wholeheartedly support her. It is slightly surreal to be sitting across from Elizabeth in her private drawing room, alone except for the ladies-in-waiting hovering nearby, embroidering and waiting to be called upon. After her initial frosty reception of Lucy, Elizabeth seems to have come around, and takes a wise-older-aunt tone, as if to counsel her in the wicked ways of the world. “Thou knowest, Lady Clairmont,” she says, sipping her wine and reaching for the ever-present tray of sweetmeats, “I am most lonely these days. Lord Leicester died two years ago, and Lord Essex – ” She sighs. “I should not allow him such liberties, yes. But at least he diverts me.”

Lucy utters a comforting hum, as she is careful with talking too much about historical people when she knows their ultimate fate. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, is the late Leicester’s stepson and another of Elizabeth’s current favorites; he has mastered the art of lavishing the elderly Queen with praise and blandishment in exchange for favors, military commands, and other patronages. He has a reputation for not being respectful enough while she indulgently forgives him, and already flouted her orders in regard to the Spanish Armada, but his greatest scandal does not come until 1599 and his comprehensive failure as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The fallout from that leads to his rebellion against the Crown and eventual execution for treason. He’s one of Lucy and Flynn’s neighbors on the Strand, in fact, but it’s a very strange feeling to sit here and know how this is going to end. Lucy suspects that Elizabeth has latched onto her because as she says, she is terribly, terribly lonely. At least Lucy is not a threat, and can be a companion without the constant political backbiting. Indeed, with Elizabeth’s warning that any further displeasure will have consequences, that means Lucy _has_ to make her happy, and if that is the only sort of friendship a queen can have, so be it.

At least the proximity to Elizabeth means that Lucy can delicately press on the topic of Dr. Dee, but she has to be very careful with that. Elizabeth will lose her temper if she thinks Lucy is grasping too much above her station, and Lucy hopes that playing the educated-woman angle will help, since that is why Elizabeth wanted to talk with her. But when the subject of alchemy is raised, Elizabeth gives her a narrow look, seeing right through where this is going. “I would hope that thou art not making ill use of the forgiveness I hath most mercifully granted thee, Lady Clairmont,” she says coldly. “I see no need for thee or thy husband to have aught to do with Dr. Dee, and my mind has not changed.”

Lucy hastens to assure her that she is not, but since she is continuing her lessons with Lady Beaton, she can only imagine what Elizabeth would make of her learning magic from a former close associate of her executed archrival. That would definitely count as “ill use,” and Lucy lives in terror that one of the royal spies will see her coming and going from Beaton House. She’s not sure that Lady Beaton would agree to wait upon her instead, since the witch mistress of London does not do house calls, and besides, there’s the fact that they’re even closer to the palace at the Old Lodge. At least going into the city and to the shops at the Royal Exchange with Meg and Karl offers some veneer of plausible deniability, out and about on other errands, but Lucy knows she is playing with fire.

As for Flynn’s half of things, Marlowe’s jealousy is still holding them up at the School of Night, as is Sir Walter’s preoccupation with the lost colony of Roanoke (though he of course does not yet know that it is lost). At the end of the week, Flynn decides in exasperation that there is nothing to be done for it. “Are you willing to put on a show?” he asks. “Something to break the news to him that it is gone, and it’s time to focus on other things?”

Lucy, who has just gotten home from hours of work with Lady Beaton – they are trying to teach her how to conjure a familiar out of witchfire, a magical creature that can aid and protect her, and which would certainly be of use if the hooded figure returns – is already exhausted. But she has been bone-tired ever since they got here, and they do need to do something. “All right,” she sighs. “I’ll play the oracle tonight, if it’ll help.”

“Thank you.” Flynn smooths her hair out of her face and kisses her. “Hopefully it won’t take long. And besides, after all they’ve heard about you, I imagine they want to meet you.”

Lucy sighs, but gets Meg to help her look presentable for an evening out, as most of their evenings are. It is fashionable for the nobility to take supper away from home; you are not thought much of if you eat alone in your own dining room, and even if it is just going round the corner to your local ordinary, the point is to step out. The most socially elite eat at other grand houses almost every night of the week, in a constant carousel of rivalry, patronage, whispers passed, private arrangements made, political bargains struck, palms greased and bribes paid. Nobody thinks this is particularly corrupt or unusual, but just how things work, as England is in the full rush of early modernity and burgeoning globalization, but still relies on medieval structures of personal influence and preference. Flynn and Lucy have made the rounds at most of their immediate neighbors by now, and everyone is almost indecently fascinated with her. She is getting tired of being gaped at like an animal in the Royal Menagerie (which at this point is held in the Tower of London, and allows a lion and tiger to roam free on the grounds, periodically obliging reparations to be paid for inadvertent maulings). She would _kill_ for one quiet night in with just Flynn.

Nonetheless, duty calls, and they make their way to Durham House, where they are received and shown inside. At their entrance, a handsome, dark-haired, elegantly bearded man in a ruff gets to his feet and bows to her, and Lucy realizes with a small shock that this is Walter Raleigh. “My lady,” he says, kissing her hand. “We have heard so many things about you. We are told you may be able to divine the fate of mine own colony of Roanoke in the New World, and the settlers therein?”

“Ah, yes, my lord, I hope to.” Lucy gives him a smile, hoping to look like a matron of mystic wisdom, as glasses of wine are passed and more introductions are made. Thomas Harriot also comes up to bow over her hand, and there, as he clearly cannot resist skulking wherever they might turn up and he _is_ a member of the School, is Kit Marlowe. He strolls up to her with an air of apparent casualness, and before he can say anything, she smiles at him too. “Good evening, my lord. And how do you keep tonight?”

“Most well, my lady.” Marlowe inclines his head gracefully. As Raleigh and the others are setting up for whatever they intend to do, he pulls at her sleeve, stepping them back into a corner of the drawing room. In a lower voice, he murmurs, “And how does Lady Beaton keep, then? It is my understanding that you have been seeing quite a lot of her?”

An unpleasant shock goes through Lucy. She was so busy worrying about Elizabeth’s spies that she forgot about the possibility of Marlowe’s – indeed, in the present, there are plenty of theories that he himself was a spy for the English government, one of Walsingham’s secret agents, and worked in some classified capacity for them, despite his later disgrace and suspicion of atheism and treason. If that’s the case, including Marlowe in the School of Night seems risky, but Flynn is also a spy for Elizabeth and presumably has reconciled that activity with this one. Besides, their activities right now are no more outrageous or illegal than any of the other gentlemen’s societies that meet to discuss learned subjects, and Sir Walter is still high in favor at court – his controversial marriage to Bess Throckmorton won’t take place until next year, and he is certainly not planning any secret subversion against Elizabeth. But if Marlowe has gotten wind of the very dangerous information about Lucy’s association with Lady Beaton, when they were already hinting at blackmail of each other at the Pembrokes’ ball, this is not good. She tries not to say anything, give too much away. “Oh?”

“Indeed.” Marlowe glances up at her with a mild expression. “Surely the name is familiar? A Scottish lady, a close companion of the executed Queen of Scots, and furthermore, the mistress of the London coven? Not, of course, that I would hasten to place fellow creatures in unwarranted danger. As a daemon, I am not without sympathy for the persecutions in which the witches presently find themselves. But if I was to forget myself…”

“Gabriel.” Lucy was going to ask where he got this information, but she doesn’t need to. Whatever is going on with Gabriel and Marlowe’s jealousy, whoever it is ultimately directed at, they need to get it under control, or it could do irreparable damage. “Gabriel told you that he gave me her name, didn’t he? But you have no proof that I’ve continued to see her.”

“Do I not?” Marlowe shrugs. “Take that risk if you will, my lady. Yet I would personally think it unwise.”

Lucy curses to herself. The wise thing to do seems to be to cut off her lessons with Lady Beaton immediately, but she _is_ learning a lot, and she can’t let Kit Marlowe intimidate her out of them. “I am a loyal subject to Queen Elizabeth. And any accusation you make about me, even if it was ultimately proven to be false, would rebound onto Garcia. You know that.”

Marlowe’s expression flickers. It’s clear that however sorely he wants her gone, it does not extend to wishing the damage onto Flynn, and he takes a moment to recollect himself. He doubtless is aware of the need to tread carefully, as she reminded him at the ball that there are other charges she could bring against him. She won’t, but he doesn’t need to know that. They stare at each other again, until Lucy says, “What do you want? I keep asking you this. You and Gabriel, are you – what? Plotting to remove me no matter what?”

“The lord de Clermont and I do share some personal interests on this,” Kit says. “But more than anything else, we want the truth of you, my lady, and what you intend with Garcia. You have been lying since you arrived in London, we all know it. Even tonight, you are here in a trusted advisory capacity to Sir Walter, when he has never met you before in his life. You are the most dangerous creature in London, Lady Clairmont, and you do not seem to realize it. It behooves you to take care.”

This sounds half like a threat and half like a warning, as if Marlowe, no matter all of his connivance against her, is at least trying to get to the bottom of it out of genuine concern for Flynn, and does not actually want to betray her to the Queen. Lucy racks her brains, trying to think what she can say to convince him, if she’s not just going to fuck it and tell him the whole “we came from the future” part. She can insist that she doesn’t want to hurt Garcia until her face turns blue, but she can’t blame Marlowe for not buying it without some solid proof. “Look,” she says. “This isn’t the time or the place for it, but can we meet somewhere else, later? I’ll talk more to you then, I promise. All right?”

“Very well.” Marlowe considers her, then dips his head in half a nod. “I shall find somewhere for it. I am, however, most intrigued to hear what you have to say tonight.”

So is she, Lucy thinks grimly, as preparations are concluded, she sits down with the intent attention of the School of Night upon her (George Chapman and Matthew Roydon are elsewhere, as the full number rarely meets together) and puts on what she can only hope is a convincing performance. Presumably Flynn has informed Sir Walter that she is a witch of great ability and her word can be trusted, so Lucy feigns to enter a trance, to travel by spirit and air across the sea to the New World, and to see the empty and abandoned colony, the houses pulled down, the word CROATOAN etched on the remains of the stockade, as John White will find when he arrives. Hopefully she will be vindicated when he gets back to England and tells Sir Walter the same story, though she and Flynn might be gone by then. It feels ridiculously fairground-charlatan, but at least they seem to be buying it. Everyone, that is, except for Kit. When Lucy opens her eyes, Raleigh and Harriot thank her emotionally for doing this service, but Marlowe only arches an elegant dark eyebrow as high as it will go. Catching her gaze over their heads, he mouths, _Liar._

That, unfortunately, is true, even if not in the way he thinks. Sir Walter wants her to re-enter the trance, to see if any of the colonists can be found, so Lucy tells him about Virginia Dare, John White’s granddaughter, known as the first child of European descent to be born in the New World. She also remembers the theories that the surviving colonists ran away to Hatteras Island to the south and were taken in by the local tribe of Native Americans, so she says that some of them may still be alive, but scattered, hidden. She performs small, unobtrusive spells as she does this, so Marlowe, who can sense the presence of real magic, will hopefully be more inclined to believe that it was not completely faked. When it is finally finished and they can think of no more questions to ask her, Flynn says to Sir Walter, “So might we now discuss what I have been enquiring about, my lord? The manuscript?”

“Aye, you have been the most tenacious about that.” Raleigh still looks distracted by the news of his colony being completely gone, but rubs his face and attempts to focus. “You think it is an alchemical text possibly composed by Dr. Dee, not so? What was the title?”

Lucy and Flynn exchange an awkward look. They, after all, know it only as “Ashmole 782,” and since Elias Ashmole won’t be born for another twenty-seven years, not making his bequest to the Bodleian for another hundred and two, they can’t exactly ask Raleigh to look for it under that name. “I am not sure,” Flynn admits. “But in some circles, it is rumored to be called the Book of Life.”

Both of Marlowe’s eyebrows go up at that, and Lucy is quite sure that the name means something to him, even if he gazes back at her with an expression of studious blankness when she sharply turns her head. Nobody else notices, and Raleigh considers. “Very well. I will raise the subject when I call upon Her Majesty tomorrow.”

“Carefully,” Flynn cautions. “Do not bring our names into it. She seemed... less than enamored with the idea of our having anything to do with Dee.”

“He has brought some ill whispers upon himself with his sojourn to Bohemia, to be sure.” Sir Walter takes a bracing gulp of wine. “Though the emperor is known as a patron of oddities and of the mystic arts, so I doubt not that Dee found a most hospitable home among Rudolf’s collections. I shall tell you what can be learned, though.”

Flynn and Lucy thank him, and finally take their leave and set off to return to the Old Lodge. No terrifying hooded figure pursues them this time, thankfully, though Flynn keeps looking edgily over his shoulder and holding Lucy’s arm tightly as if he expects it to try. When they get home and go upstairs to their bedchamber, Lucy blurts out, “Marlowe wants to talk to me, in private. He and Gabriel are – they’ve basically threatened to expose me to Elizabeth, tell her about my lessons with Lady Beaton, if I don’t tell them who I really am and where I’ve come from. I know that we can’t just drop the bomb that we’re from the future, but Garcia, I – what are we going to do?”

“Shhh.” Flynn pulls her onto his lap, kissing the side of her head. “Damn it, Gabriel really isn’t giving this up, is he? I don’t doubt that Marlowe has something to do with it as well, but Gabriel is the one driving it. I’ll think about this, _moja ljubav._ Hopefully Christian will be back with Agnes Sampson soon. You did say that Lady Beaton sent the message to her?”

“Yes.” Lucy rocks back and forth agitatedly on his knees. “Assuming everything went well, he should return to London in a few more days, shouldn’t he?”

“Assuming.” Flynn’s hand tightens on her arm, and they can feel the wordless, shared concern. “But we’ll just trust that it did.”

Lucy is not sure that either of them wants to contemplate the alternative, and they get into bed and curl up in each other’s arms, as they tend to sleep these days. The other downside of constantly being out late is that they are both exhausted when they get home, and the promised intimate experimentation keeps getting put off. Flynn has in fact gone down on her a few more times, and she has returned the favor, though she can tell that he’s still uncomfortable about accepting reciprocal intimacy and care. It is just easier for him to lavish his devotion on her, rather than believe he is worthy of hers, but at least, Lucy thinks, they are talking about this, negotiating, making an effort, and she doesn’t feel so bitterly alone as she did for the first week here. But May is going by quickly, and it has taken them this long just to get their oxen pulling in the right direction. Only five more months, and their progress to date has not been outstanding. You have to hope it goes faster now, but still.

Lucy falls asleep and has odd dreams, and as is usually the case, Flynn is gone when she wakes up. It is Saturday, and she is praying to have an actual weekend for once, without the need to visit the Queen at Whitehall or Lady Beaton in the city or any of the countless roulette of social invitations from the peers. Lucy is too much of an introvert to live this way long-term; she needs her alone time or she’s going to go insane. She lies with her eyes closed, wondering if it is possible to achieve symbiotic unity with the mattress, and almost screams with frustration when there’s a knock on the door. “My lady?”

It’s Parry. Lucy swears. “What?”

“There is a – a visitor. My lord is away, so if you – ?”

By the steward’s tone, she can tell that it’s important, though if it was Gabriel, he probably would have just burst right in here without giving a fuck. “Is it Christian?”

“No, my lady. If you would – ”

Son of a bitch. Yet again, a lie-in is not in the cards. Lucy almost doesn’t care if it’s scandalously improper to receive a morning caller in her nightgown, and gets up, wraps herself in a dressing gown, and plods downstairs in an extremely grumpy mood. It’s still early for calling hours, and while it’s not as much as a production as it is with the Victorians, there are established patterns and protocols to follow. So who has turned up and is so important that Parry thinks she has to receive them immediately, or –

Lucy reaches the foot of the stairs, and sees the visitor waiting in the front hall. Something instinctively makes her catch her breath, although she can’t say why. The newcomer is tall, with close-trimmed dark curls that glint red in the sunlight, and his face has the unearthly, sculpted, ageless beauty that means he’s a vampire. His expression is grave and courteous, his eyes a surprising light grey in his olive complexion, and he is dressed in traveling clothes that nonetheless bespeak considerable wealth. He lifts his gaze to her and says in English, with an accent she can’t place, “You must be Lady Clairmont?”

“Yes?” Lucy pulls her dressing gown more tightly. Is this another of the vampire rulers of London, someone sent from Father Andrew Hubbard, or perhaps Hubbard himself? Gabriel said that he was a former Calvinist priest, however, and this one doesn’t look like it. “What exactly are you doing here? This is my husband’s house, I don’t think you should just walk in while he’s away and – ”

The man smiles, as if she has said something amusing. He has a towering gravity, a physical effect on the air, that she has only ever encountered in Gabriel, but times several. He does not seem to move fast, but nonetheless in the blink of an eye, he is in front of her. “My apologies,” he says, in a tone that is no apology at all. “My son must not have mentioned me. I have the honor to be, my lady, as master of this house and of this family, Lord Asher de Clermont.”


	5. Pater Noster

The name of the tavern that Flynn has been given is in Clerkenwell, a notorious vice district that lies outside the city walls and is less subject to the city laws. This London is like that: extremely expensive parts of town in the modern day, such as Hyde Park Corner, are presently undeveloped pastureland or rough tenements where most people don’t go after dark, the deprived council estates of the Elizabethan era. Clerkenwell used to be the English headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller, until their wealthy priory was disestablished in the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and Flynn wonders if some of it has been borrowed by the Knights of Lazarus instead. Still, the sight is a wake-up call, after spending the last several weeks in the affluent embrace of the nobility. Ramshackle pot-shops, dice-dens, winesinks, gardens, taverns, ordinaries, and many, many brothels cram the narrow streets, beggars sit with sticks and bowls, packs of dirty children run wild, johns sleeping off last night’s ale snore in gutters, and all sorts of things are being poured out of upper-story windows. Flynn has managed to avoid being doused, but that might only be down to vampiric reflexes. It’s a damn dunking booth. It also reeks.

Muttering to himself, he pulls his cloak hood more tightly and wonders what on earth his brother is doing here. It’s a far cry from the lap of luxury he expected Gabriel to be lounging in – just because he hasn’t been able to stay with them in the house doesn’t mean that he needs to be picking through the dust for scraps. He has plenty of money to hire better accommodations, and Mary Sidney at least has several ancillary properties in which she could stash him. When you sleep with as many rich people as Gabriel does, you have options. But if he’s actually here in some sleazy, wretched stew – what the _fuck,_ Flynn thinks, this isn’t like him, not his vain, fashion-obsessed, effortlessly beautiful brother. Gabriel is far too good for any of this. Jesus, has someone kidnapped him too?

He reaches the swinging sign of one of the brothels, steels himself, and pushes inside. The taproom is low and dark, and a few of the girls are sweeping and tidying from last night. They look surprised to see Flynn, as most customers don’t arrive until later, but before they can ask if he wants the breakfast special, he holds up a hand. “I was told the French lord was here. Hast thou seen him?”

“And what’s it to you?” The nearest girl leaves off her sweeping and eyes him challengingly. Most brothels are sensitive to the possibility of aggrieved rivals of whatever sort charging in and dragging clients out by their heels, but a place like this has never met a secret it couldn’t sell, rather than a high-class establishment dedicated to preserving anonymity. Is Gabriel meeting Marlowe _here?_ If someone sees the two of them together –

“I am his brother,” Flynn says shortly. “And if, as I expect, he hasn’t yet paid his bill, permit me to do so, unless thou wouldst claim he has?”

Indeed, Gabriel is unsurprisingly arrears on his tab, and Flynn pulls a golden angel out of his cloak and allows the girls to see it, at which point they get considerably more cooperative. He leaves it as a down payment, though it would probably cover a whole week here, and he tosses a few extra shillings for their trouble, which induce them to inform him that the pretty French lord is in fact upstairs, room at the end of the hall. If he is here to chastise him, they hope he will have the good decency to do it outside.

Flynn assures them that he’s not intending to make a mess (here, at least) and takes the narrow stairs two or three at a time. A topless whore peers at him, the smell of sex and sweat and unwashed linen and old wine is strong enough that he tries to breathe through his mouth, and he reaches the room at the end, bangs on the door – and then, when it isn’t answered, ducks through.

Inside, clothes of several descriptions are scattered on the floor, and Flynn braces himself for how many extra witnesses he is going to have to get rid of first. However, as he glances at the bed, eyes screwed up just in case, he only sees two figures. By the looks of the tousled covers, there was a third party, likely one of the girls of the establishment, as two men sharing a whore does not incur any suspicion and would not raise any questions about sodomy (which would be allowed, perhaps, but only after a payment of a stiff bribe to ensure silence). But whores rarely sleep in bed overnight with clients, and as of now, Gabriel’s only companion is indeed none other than Kit bloody Marlowe. They’re both shirtless, the covers wound around their waists, Gabriel’s arm draped over Marlowe’s bare back and a few fresh marks on Marlowe’s throat to make clear that Gabriel was having several sorts of enjoyment from him. Something inexplicable twists in Flynn’s gut, but he hasn’t actually come here to have a spectacle of their debauchery. It’s tempting to just throw a bucket of cold water on them, if one was to hand, but instead he raises his voice. “HEY.”

Gabriel stirs, then flashes upright, as the presence of an unexpected intruder at a compromising position is not one to be ignored. But before he can make a proper move to the rapier left on the chair with the rest of his clothes, he realizes that it’s Flynn, and sinks back against the grimy pillows. “God’s bones,” he says, almost conversationally. “How in hellfire did you get here, darling?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Flynn waves a hand at the scene, the half-full wine goblets, the mess, the reek of hard fucking. “Jesus, Gabriel, it’s filthy!”

“Yes, well.” Gabriel puts a hand on Marlowe’s head as Kit also stirs at the sound of their voices. “You seemed to have closed up the shop at our own house, hadn’t you? Had to find other arrangements.”

He isn’t slurring, but he is pronouncing the words with just enough exaggerated care to make Flynn realize that he’s still rather drunk. Not in the ordinary way, since alcohol doesn’t affect vampires if they just drink it straight, but it appears that Marlowe was more than taking care of drinking it first, and Gabriel then fed on him. In that way, vampires can acquire the vicarious sensation of it, and Gabriel’s eyes are bloodshot, his hair tousled, until Flynn stares at him with real concern. Gabriel’s devil-may-care, over-the-top, nymphomaniac antics are one thing, but he’s used to that charming mess. This is just mess.

“That doesn’t mean you had to be here.” Flynn wonders if he should go to the bed and drag them out, but he doesn’t feel quite prepared to do that. “Does Christian know you’re – ”

“I don’t believe he does, no,” Gabriel spits, venomous as a cobra. “He’s not in London just the moment, as you will have noticed. Why exactly, darling, did you send him on some secret mission to Scotland behind my back? You still have not answered that question, along with _any_ of my other ones. So if you’re actually here thinking that you can shame me, when you’re the one who took my son away from me, as _well_ as whatever’s become of you, and you and me, after you dragged that witch in – ”

Flynn’s heart contracts into a freezing, icy fist. It’s true, of course it’s true, and this Gabriel has no idea how horribly so. Of course, he _is_ the reason Gabriel loses his son and their whole relationship is destroyed, and the guilt momentarily locks his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Then he remembers why he’s come here, and shakes himself. “Lucy said that Kit spoke to her last night. That both of you were threatening to say something to the Queen, as regards what you think you believe about her association with Lady Mary Beaton.”

“Kit, darling.” Gabriel prods him. “My _dearest_ brother would like to accuse you too. Sit up.”

Marlowe raises his tousled head, scanning Flynn up and down. It’s hard to say if he is ashamed or angry or guilty or anything else, upon Flynn catching him in bed with his brother. Then he says, “I did say no such thing. Merely that your sudden wife is now someone that even Sir Walter can place his faith and counsel in, never having seen or known her before? That mummery last night about the Roanoke colony was more of a stage drama than anything I have ever writ myself, Garcia. She is a liar and deceiver and God knows only – ”

“She is not,” Flynn snaps. “Don’t you dare do anything to her – you lay a single _finger_ on her, or say a word to anyone, and I’ll – ”

Gabriel stares at him with an expression of hurt too naked to disguise, stripped of any flamboyance or pretense or airy flirtation. “So you love her,” he says, throwing each word with the unerring precision of a dagger. “It’s not what you’ve been trying to claim, whatever fable you fed to Her Majesty about doing a favor for an English lady conveniently in peril in France. You love this witch, you married her, you’ve been lying to us all, you’ve been lying to _me,_ you’ve put our entire family in danger, and now – ”

“I’m trying to save our family!” Flynn bellows, even as he remembers that if he is too loud, the whores will come up here, and he does not want them to see Gabriel and Kit like this. There are many profitable opportunities to blackmail a wealthy lord with unorthodox sexual tastes, and Kit only has three more years to live anyway, they don’t need to go cutting that even shorter. “I’m trying to save _you,_ and since that seems hard enough – ”

“Oh, hard enough, does it?” Gabriel throws the covers back and gets to his feet. He’s wearing a pair of unlaced breeches, at least, but he stalks across the floor, shirtless and majestic and barefoot, fangs bared, eyes black. He grabs Flynn by the collar and practically throws him against the wall, an effortless flick of his wrist – between the two of them, that extra five hundred years does make a difference, and Gabriel has always been stronger. “Of course, we would not want you to go to any effort saving _me_ from whatever mad nonsense you have dreamed up with your witch whore, now would we? Unless you – ”

“Don’t you call Lucy a whore, especially when _you’re_ the one in this reeking sty of – ”

Gabriel snarls at him, looking as if he is about to bite Flynn in the throat the way he did during their fight after Lucy was kidnapped from Sept-Tours, and that hits Flynn like an onrushing train. Jesus, he is blowing this, he is _blowing_ this, arguably even worse than he did with Lucy. All he can see is the Gabriel he knows, the Gabriel who would be cold or indifferent or ferociously fighting back, not this Gabriel who is metaphorically bleeding all over the place, wounded and raw and betrayed and heartsick. In Flynn’s blind, dogged insistence that he is going to find a way to save Gabriel physically in the present, he is at very real risk of destroying this Gabriel here, now, and starting their estrangement all over again, almost two hundred years ahead of schedule. He does not remember in the least who they used to be. He has no idea how to treat Gabriel like he used to, the one who would have told him everything about Lucy the first time he asked, who indeed might have been with him when he met her, as they are so rarely anywhere else. He is losing this all over again. Him.

Flynn slowly raises his hands, and tilts his chin up to expose his throat, the equivalent of a dog rolling over on its back to submit to the alpha. “Hey,” he says, much less vehemently. “Easy, huh? Easy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Gabriel hisses at him again, as Flynn glances down and realizes that his feet are several inches off the floor. He reaches out and covers Gabriel’s hands with his own, holding firmly, easing their stone-frozen grip until Gabriel’s fingers belatedly uncurl. Flynn’s boots hit the dirty boards again with a thump, and he reaches out, taking Gabriel’s head in his hands, making his mad black eyes focus on him. “Hey. Hey, Gabriel, _moje srce._ It’s just me.”

Gabriel blinks, seems slowly to surface from the murderous reverie, and some of the whites return to his eyes. He stares back at Flynn as if not quite sure who he is, snaps his fangs out of sight, and turns wordlessly on his heel, back toward the bed. “You may go now.”

“I…” Flynn wrestles with it, one more time. There is absolutely no way to know if this is a good idea, telling Gabriel could comprehensively mess up the timelines and memories of their entire family both in past and present, and trying to justify any future that does not include Christian in it is going to be even worse. In some ways, Lucy could safely tell Lady Beaton because she will have no further effect on their lives, and as a witch, she can mentor Lucy in the magic she does not know and has not properly practiced. But Gabriel knowing could change everything – and yet. However insane it sounds, at least it’s better than the incoherent, unsatisfying half-truths they’ve tried to pawn off on him to increasingly worse effect. “Get dressed, all right? And come back to the house with me. I promise, I _promise,_ I will explain it then.”

Gabriel eyes him loathingly. “What is the catch, darling?”

“Nothing.” Flynn blows out a breath, then glances at Kit. “You just – I know that Lucy asked to meet you. Since you and Gabriel are clearly such good friends, maybe he will pass it along later. In the meantime, you say nothing, you don’t utter a whisper about Lucy or Lady Beaton to anyone, or I swear to Christ, I will tell someone what I have seen here this morning.”

Kit blanches. He stares at Flynn as if he likewise doesn’t know him – after all, they are friends, colleagues at the School of Night, Flynn is apparently the object of Kit’s unrequited crush – and in that moment, Flynn instantly wishes he hadn’t said it. “Kit,” he starts. “Kit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That was too much, I didn’t – I just – I just can’t let you say anything.”

“Oh, that was clear enough.” Marlowe tosses the covers back and gets up, bare-ass naked, in search of his shirt. “Run off, the both of you, and do not trouble yourself. The smell of this place sickens me, but not so much as the pair of you cowardly French bastards.”

That might be a mild and slightly amusing insult in the modern day, but here, it is a serious oath that can get you challenged to a duel if you utter it too intemperately. The suggestion of illegitimacy undermines your entire family name and place in the world, the honor of your mother and the intelligence of your father, and it’s clear that Kit is (justifiably) feeling badly used by both of them by throwing it at a pair of vampires. Gabriel takes a step, as if to comfort him, but Kit flashes up a hand. “At least Garcia is honest about his intentions to turn me in if I should pose a threat,” he says. “Whereas you, my lord Gabriel, are in even more delusion than I. Have me hangit if thou wishes, but that solves nothing.”

“Kit, I didn’t – ” Flynn is remembering in force why he never talks to anyone, and why everyone is constantly mad at him. “Kit, I wouldn’t – ”

Marlowe ignores him, pulling up his breeches in icy silence and tucking in his shirt. Once he has found his shoes and cloak, he shoves roughly past Garcia and Gabriel and does not look back, and they watch him vanish down the stairs in leaden silence. Then Gabriel says, “If you’ve cost me Kit – ”

“I’ll make it up to him.” Flynn does not know how he’s going to do that, seeing as he appears to have comprehensively torched his friendship with the poet in less than a month, and no matter the threat that Marlowe has posed, that was beyond the pale. “I swear.”

“Another sacrifice for Lucy?” Gabriel regards him mockingly. “I do hope she’s worth all this, darling. How many bodies have you heaped on her altar by now?”

“It’s not just Lucy, it’s… everything.” Flynn rubs his face. “Just… come with me, all right?”

Gabriel looks as if, frankly, he still thinks that ripping Flynn’s throat out is the wisest course of action here, but after a very fraught moment, he makes a noncommittal sound, gathers up his own clothes, and gets dressed without another word. He stalks after Flynn down the stairs, thus to attract the lively attention of the girls in the common room; Flynn imagines that they were fighting over which of them got the extremely handsome, extremely wealthy French lordling as a client. Gabriel is apparently not too overwrought to blow a kiss to his adoring public, and Flynn growls under his breath, grabs his arm, and propels him out the door. “You already have how many liaisons? Do you really need to bed Clerkenwell whores now too?”

“One can never have too many entertainments, can they, darling?” Gabriel is still not totally sober, and his progress down the street is hence not proceeding in an entirely straight line. Flynn grabs his arm again to prevent him from staggering into a hay-cart, noting that Gabriel only appears to have done up one button of every three on his doublet. Christ, they will be lucky if they are not apprehended for public indecency on the spot. “You know me. I like to try everything that I can. What’s the point of living forever otherwise?”

In Flynn’s opinion, Gabriel could stand to try several fewer things, not least much of what he has been doing lately, but he doesn’t feel like this is the moment to spark another row, when they’ve barely avoided the last one. He manages to get them back through the city gates without being arrested for drunkenness and lechery, though he’s still steering Gabriel rather heavily by the time they make it back to the Strand. As they reach the Old Lodge, Flynn takes note of a kerfuffle in the courtyard, an unfamiliar horse tied at the post, and frowns, his anxiety jacking up once again. It would really be a terrible time for a summons from the Queen, or for that matter, anything else. Did Marlowe run straight off and inform to the Privy Council, in revenge for Flynn’s badly ill-judged remark this morning? Is Lucy all right?

He practically blasts through the gate, leaving Gabriel to shift for himself, and shoulders through the crowd, increasingly frantic. Did that horrible hooded thing return? Did Karl fail in his sacred duty as stick man? Nobody _looks_ as if they’re dealing with the aftermath of an immediately apocalyptic event, but that doesn’t mean anything. Not unless –

“Good morrow, Garcia.”

The sound of the voice skids Flynn to a halt as wildly as a driver wrangling in a runaway coach and six, only barely stopped before hitting a tree and going up in dramatic calamity. He knows that voice, he _knows_ it, he could never forget it, and yet he can’t understand how he’s hearing it now, _here._ Not until, in another stunning, half-mad moment, he does, and struggles to control his face, the feeling as if he has just been punched very hard in the gut. After all, his other self would – if not be entirely pleased about the timing of this apparition – not react as if he had heard a ghost, either. Even though, for this Flynn, he very much has.

Barely able to get his tongue around the word, as casually as he can, Flynn says, “Papa.”

“Indeed.” Asher de Clermont is a tall man, and always seems taller in comparison to the rest of the madding crowd, like a stream in spring flood racing around an immovable boulder, the center of the world, the still point and the fulcrum upon which all else rests. He is wearing traveling clothes, that must be his horse, and he moves forward with measured, unhurried strides, pulling off his leather riding gloves and thrusting them through his belt. “I was wondering where you had gone. Your… wife said you were out.”

The inflection of that word, the deliberate pause before it, communicates most effectively that Asher has any number of questions that he expects to be satisfactorily answered, and would not have traveled to London from Sept-Tours unless he thought those answers were paramount. How did he hear about this? Did Gabriel write to him, complaining that Garcia had suddenly lost his mind and brought a strange witch into their lives, their house, his bed? Flynn is still completely at a loss now, for that matter. It is like the shock of seeing Christian, times several hundred. It’s his father, his _father,_ the founder and grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus, the patriarch who held their family together through hundreds of years, whose tortured, lifeless body, hanging in its chains in the subterranean bunker, is the enduring image of the utter defeat and sundering of that family. His mother’s scream rips through Flynn’s head anew, making his teeth rattle, even as he stares at an Asher who must have seen him only a few months ago, decidedly unmarried, and is awaiting the start of those explanations with eyebrow cocked. Flynn opens his mouth, gets nowhere at all, and shuts it.

“Ah, and Gabriel,” Asher says, glancing past him to the gate, where Gabriel has leaned against the wall as if he meant to do that all along. “Where have you been?”

“Papa.” Gabriel gives something halfway between a wave and a sarcastic salute. He, of course, is suffering no existential crises, aside from a pressing need to conceal his night of debauchery from his father and not look quite as drunk as he is. “How lovely to see you.”

Asher raises both eyebrows at his eldest son, clearly sensing that his task here is rather more difficult than he originally anticipated. Then he says, “Solar, both of you. Now.”

With that, he turns on his heel, cloak flaring out behind him, and walks inside, as Gabriel and Flynn exchange looks as if to draw straws for who must follow him first. Neither of them seem eager for the honor, and since Gabriel clearly needs a great deal of help in any number of ways, Flynn grabs his arm once again and levers him across the muddy courtyard, inside, and up the stairs after the imperious silhouette of their father. He pushes the door open into the lord’s solar, striped with filmy sunlight, and glances warily at Asher, who is calmly pouring himself a cup of hippocras. Without looking up, their father says again, “In.”

Gabriel and Flynn shuffle guiltily over the threshold like a pair of schoolboys in for a caning, shut the door, and then remain where they are. They really are acting the most suspicious they possibly could, Flynn thinks, but he still can’t recover from the shock and Gabriel is probably using all of his remaining brainpower to stand up straight. They fold their hands behind their backs, as both of them, full-grown men and accomplished soldiers with long careers, Gabriel with a son of his own, turn into boys again around their father. Asher is already over two and a half millennia old; when he dies in 1944, he’s seen over three thousand years of life. As Flynn told Lucy back in Woodstock, Asher is from ancient Greece, was already nine hundred when he marched in Alexander the Great’s army, and while he can be generous and loving, still has a tendency to run his home and family in the same way. Gabriel, Garcia, and William (as he has not yet taken the name Wyatt in the nineteenth-century American West) are Asher’s sons, but they are also Knights of Lazarus, fellow guardians of creature peace and order, soldiers who are part of the great scheme of politics and power, and he never allows them to forget that duty. He usually stays in Sept-Tours when his services are not needed elsewhere, but for him to be here in person, he must feel that the situation warrants personal intervention. Flynn keeps staring at him. Maria screams in his head again.

“Well,” Asher says at last, having kept them hanging for the exquisitely suitable amount of time and slowly turning to face them, an elder god opening its eyes in fire or stone or carven tree. He speaks Old French, the closest thing to a native language that all the de Clermonts share. “Which of you would like to explain what it is you have been doing?”

Gabriel and Flynn share the “no, _you_ first” look common to siblings in trouble from the beginning of time, each of them hoping that their father will pick the other to fess up instead. Gabriel clears his throat. “Papa, it is his fault. I told you in my letter, he – ”

“Yes, the witch you appear to have intemperately married, without a word to any of us.” Asher’s deep-set grey eyes fix on Flynn. “That would be the greatest purpose of my visit.”

Flynn shoots a you-tattletale look at Gabriel, who stares insolently back. They really are acting like brothers, albeit five-year-olds. But when Flynn himself cannot seem to come up with anything, Gabriel says, “He has had the temerity to bring that witch here, to the house. She is going about calling herself Lady Clairmont, she is wearing the _ring_ of our family, and trust me, there are other whispers about what she might be – ”

“Silence.” Asher does not raise his voice, but it cuts as unmistakably as a whip. “I also have questions aplenty as to what you have been doing, Gabriel. You reek of piss and poor wine.”

Flynn thinks that it is charitable of their father not to mention the numerous other things that Gabriel also reeks of, but this is still quite a sight. There is no other man in the entire world who can pull rank on Gabriel de Clermont and have him not only respect it, but almost look cowed. Of the three de Clermont sons, Asher physically helped to turn only Gabriel, but he is just as fully Garcia and Wyatt’s father, since any blood children that a mated vampire turns automatically and legally become the children of their partner as well. Because their blood has been exchanged, intermingled, sealed as one, Maria’s sires are just as much Asher’s as if he had in fact done them himself, and he clearly is the least thing from impressed with their ongoing tomfoolery. When still neither of them say anything, he takes a deliberate sip of hippocras. Then he puts it down and says, “Who is this woman, Garcia?”

“She is…” Flynn fumbles for any sort of acceptable answer. “She is someone I met… somewhere else. You know that she’s a witch, we have traveled a long way to be here, and it’s difficult to explain, but I’m not the Garcia you think I am.”

Asher and Gabriel both stare at him, but Asher is too composed to show outright shock. “Your brother says that she wears a de Clermont family ring. Why did you give it to her?”

“I didn’t,” Flynn says. “The ring she’s wearing – _Maman_ gave it to her. Not… now.”

There is an extremely startled pause. Then Asher says, “Your _mother_ gave it to her? When Gabriel’s letter arrived at Sept-Tours, I can assure you, she had never heard of – ”

“Not this Maria,” Flynn says, a little recklessly. “Another.”

Something starts in Asher’s eyes, for half a second as if he might be following where this is going, but even for him, it sounds ridiculous. Gabriel, however, has finally hit his limit. He utters an exasperated scoff, throwing both hands in the air. “Ah, yes! Another outlandish fable we are supposed to believe, courtesy of this witch and her inexplicable ability to make us meekly fall in line! _Maman_ would never give a family ring to some woman she had never met and who is nothing but lies and trouble and terror for our family! She has most plainly done a fine job on you, Garcia, if you are spouting this deranged babble and – ”

“It’s not a lie, damn it!” Flynn roars. “Just because you ran off to bear tales to Papa, because you and Kit Marlowe are planning to – I told you, make a single move on Lucy and I’ll – ”

“Look!” Gabriel points an accusing finger at Flynn. “Look at him! He is some mindless ghost, he’s not himself, he’s endangering our entire family and still defending her! I’ve tried everything, milder methods, a taste of honey, my particular charms, to cozen her and induce her to confess the truth of her foul designs to me, and yet. That I should tell her about Lady Beaton, well, that is to my misfortune, but it can still be remedied. I want her dead, Papa! I want the witch dead! I want her dead and out of our lives and away from this mad thrall she holds over Garcia, before she destroys all of us! _I want her dead!”_

All of them stare at him. Gabriel’s eyes are black, his fists clenched, his voice ringing through the solar, as he teeters on the brink of total explosion. Flynn feels as if he should do something, but he’s paralyzed. Gabriel can’t mean that, he can’t. He doesn’t – that’s not really – he thought Gabriel liked her, or at least to the point of flirting with her right beneath Flynn’s nose, but this – this total, unleashed _hatred –_

Asher takes two steps, puts one hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and pushes him down into a chair, standing in front of him to prevent him from getting up again. “You,” he says, crisply and coldly, “are drunk on daemon, and no credit to any of us just the moment. You will comport yourself more decently, or hold your tongue. Am I clear?”

Gabriel glances up at his father, seems to sense that he’s not fucking around, and nods sullenly, his eyes still flicking sideways to Flynn. Lucy doesn’t have supernatural hearing, but with how much Gabriel was shouting, it would be no surprise if she did in fact hear that. Does she think the three of them are in here plotting how to do her in after all? Does she know who Asher is, and what he might have meant by coming here? An ugly silence reigns over the solar and the three de Clermonts, father and sons, until Asher turns to Flynn. “Do you have anything to say for yourself, to answer your brother’s charges?”

“I…” Flynn wrestles with it like Jacob and the angel, the manifest dangers that it could cause, the disruption to the timeline and their entire family and the present that they could return to. “I told you we came a long way to be here. I met her somewhere you – could not possibly have done so, and I – I’m not being bewitched. It’s not Lucy’s damn fault. I dragged her into this. Don’t blame her for what I’ve done, the dangerous crusade I’ve been on! She would not be here in London, or in this year, if not because of me and what I asked her to do. She decided to continue with it, because that is just how she is. She is the bravest and the best and the kindest and most selfless person I’ve ever known, and you don’t get to lash out at her. I’m telling you everything that I can, but what I’m holding back, it’s not because of some nefarious connivance on her part. If you’re angry at me, fine, I deserve it. What I said to Kit this morning was unforgivable, and I’ve forgotten, Gabriel, I’ve forgotten so much about us, how to be anything with you. That’s my fault. Blame me for it. Not Lucy. Never Lucy.”

Gabriel closes his eyes briefly as if he’s been stabbed, even as Asher is watching this passionate outburst with sharp-eyed attention. There is another deeply unpleasant silence. Then Asher says, “I do not, I admit, understand half of what you are saying, even as I am beginning to wonder. When you said that you were not the Garcia I thought, what precisely did you mean by that?”

“I…” Flynn rubs his face. “I don’t know if I can tell you.”

Asher and Gabriel glance at each other, exchanging some unspoken comment, though Flynn can’t tell if they’re suspecting the same thing, or even anything. They might be about to resume this, although God knows in what direction, when they’re interrupted by a knock on the door. “Excuse me? Is everything – ?”

It’s Lucy. Once more, despite the high risk of things going sideways, she has been brave enough to confront three old and powerful de Clermonts with their dander up, and Flynn really does not want her walking into this right now. He makes a move for the door, but in an instant, Asher is past him, opening it and looking down at Lucy. She is in her nightclothes, arms folded over her dressing gown, small and vulnerable, but she lifts her chin. “I heard shouting. Is everything – everyone all right?”

Gabriel lifts his shadowed head, making half a move as if to turn to her and apologize for what she might have heard particularly from him, but he doesn’t. Nobody seems to know immediately what to do or how to deal with her. Then Asher says, “My apologies. I am having a private discussion with my sons, and it briefly became out of hand. Your concern is appreciated, yet not of necessity. We shall return when it is over.”

“Wait – ” Lucy starts, catching Flynn’s eye. “Wait, I – ”

Too late. Asher shuts the door smartly in her face, as Flynn reminds himself that this is the de Clermonts’ house, even if he is the one who lives in it right now. Thus, Asher is the unchallenged master under its roof, and as the wife of a younger son, Lucy would be outranked if Maria was here, and if Gabriel ever got married (that seems the most unlikely thing of all). There is a very long pause. Then Asher says, “I think it wise to separate the pair of you for the nonce. Gabriel, you will return to Essex and the New Lodge until I bid you otherwise, and cool your heels away from further intrigues with Christopher Marlowe or any else. Where is my grandson?”

“Christian went to Scotland,” Flynn says. “I sent him there on an errand to find Agnes Sampson, the witch of Keith. He should be home soon.”

“Aye,” Gabriel says bitterly. “Something else he will not tell me about, though it bear upon my own son. Yet it seems that is what I must accustom myself to, from this Garcia who is not who we think. I will say he damned well is not!”

Flynn looks over at him, the bleak black anguish that hangs in the air around him, and reaches an awkward hand for him. “Gabriel – ”

“Please, do not.” Gabriel gets to his feet, cold and composed at least to outward appearances, though his hands are shaking as he straightens his doublet. “Whoever this Garcia is, I like him much less than my own, and I shall pray that that one is safe returned to us, and this broken imposter and his _wife_ soon remove themselves. Papa, as you say, I shall away to Essex for a few days. But after that, I intend to return to London and continue my search for the truth of this, and I doubt you actually intend to prevent me from it. I am sorry to trouble you to come all the way from Sept-Tours, but I think you can agree, having seen for yourself, that the situation is grave. If my son does manage to return soon from this foolery you have sent him on, taking advantage of a sweet boy who only loves his unworthy uncle and wished to do well for him, be so good as to let me know. Good morrow, Papa.”

With that, and not a single glance back over his shoulder, Gabriel shakes away the last of his haze and strides out. That leaves Flynn and Asher, though Flynn is too busy staring, totally stricken, after his brother to even really register the fact that he is now alone with his not-dead father. At last, he sinks into the chair Gabriel has just vacated, feeling as if his knees have gone out. He says hoarsely, “Papa, I – I didn’t – I don’t know what to do.”

He shudders from head to heel as he says it, the way it scrapes his throat like broken glass. In some ways, the de Clermont family has not known what to do since Asher’s death, and it was only Asher himself that held them together, along with Maria, after 1762, and Flynn’s own unforgivable mistake. Insisting on his love for Lucy (he is not a fool, he knows it is that, even if he has not managed to say it directly to her or show it as much as he longs to), when insisting on his love for Matej was what destroyed them last time, seems ludicrous and selfish to the point of insanity. But he can’t, he _can’t,_ he can’t deny her or pretend it’s not what it is, and he refuses to see her suffer for his mistakes. Garcia Flynn de Clermont knows what sort of man he is, and he is all too painfully aware of his flaws. That is part of the reason he will not let Lucy entirely join with him, whether physically or magically or whatever else. She is too good for him, and much as it may break his heart, he has to give her time to see if she realizes it. Then at least, she can go her own way, and they can avoid a second cataclysm that none of them could survive. Least of all him, and his battered, fragile, broken old heart.

Asher regards him for a long moment, not without sympathy. Then he says, “What is it you were not saying earlier? If you are not my son, who are you?”

“I’m still your son. I – always will be.” Flynn feels another crack through his much-abused chest. “But where – _when –_ I came from, my father is no longer… no longer there.”

One of Asher’s elegant eyebrows jumps, but otherwise, he evinces no particular reaction to this piece of earth-shaking information. He measures his words; Asher de Clermont does very little in haste, the cool and reasoned and imperious head of the family in more ways than one, the counterpart to his reckless, headstrong sons who make decisions with any other part of the body apart from their brains. He turns and paces a few steps across the solar, majestic as the lion king of the pride, considering, impassive. Then he says, “You came from a different year, sometime in the future. Lucy is a timewalker, and that is why you met her when I could not have. Whenever you come from, as you say, I am not… I am no more.”

“I…” A third time, Maria screams in Flynn’s head. He can see his mother crumpling to her knees, back broken, as Gabriel sank down with her and tried to tether her to sanity, in those first blackened, maddening moments when the entire world had ended. “Yes.”

Asher takes that in with another imperceptible nod. The idea of death, of cessation, of _not being,_ must be completely unfathomable for an immortal as old as he already is, who will live another three hundred and fifty-four years until his brutal, extended, agonized murder. He opens his mouth as if to ask the obvious question, then decides on balance that he does not want to know. He crosses the solar and takes Flynn’s face in his hands, grip cool and strong as steel, bending his head up to the light as if to be sure that this indeed _is_ Flynn, and not some cunningly disguised forgery. Gabriel’s parting shot rattles in Flynn’s chest like hot marbles. _Broken imposter._ And the worst thing is, he is not completely wrong. Of course to this Gabriel, that is exactly what he is. Of course he wants his Garcia back. They all do.

“You are Garcia,” Asher says, after another long moment. “Whatever else you may be, I do not think that you are a liar, or mad. Do you trust this wife of yours, however you may have come by her?”

“Yes.” That, at least, Flynn does not need to think about. “Yes, I do.”

“Mmm.” Asher lets go of him, returns to his goblet, and takes several more sips. “Where is the Garcia that I would have expected to meet?”

“He’s…” Flynn is feeling as if he could stand to get drunk himself, and as noted, the only way is to have someone susceptible to alcohol to do it first, then feed on them. He isn’t entirely sure Lucy will consent to serve as a human wine cooler, nor should she. “He’s safe, he’s fine, we sent him to Dalmatia with a story that the Raven King’s lost library had been found. If he returns before that, I’ll think of something else, but we have to leave before All Souls anyway. We can’t stay longer than six months.”

“Can you not?” Asher sits down in the chair facing him. “Why is that?”

“We have to get back to our own time. We have to…” Flynn rubs the bridge of his nose. He has rarely felt more disheartened over Gabriel than he does right now. “We have to save my brother. He thinks – he thinks I don’t care, that I’ve forgotten about him, and in some ways, I have. But I – I swear, I’m doing this for him. In – when we come from.”

“So he is still alive, though I am not?” Asher considers that. “That is some comfort, I suppose. Does our family weather this, this storm?”

Flynn wants to tell him that they do, but he cannot bring himself to lie. He just raises his head and looks silently into his father’s eyes, and Asher de Clermont, the indomitable, flinches just that tiniest bit. He takes another drink, even though it does not affect him, and turns to stare into the unlit hearth. “It is not your place to bring me word of my fate,” he says at length. “Though if it is such an evil one, I cannot but hope to wish to change it.”

“I miss you.” It tumbles out of Flynn before he can help it. “Papa, I miss you so much. We all do. We’re – we’re not what you wanted for us, we can barely hold ourselves together. We’ve never managed to escape from beneath that shadow, and as badly as I’m doing everything here, I want to save what is left, to try. I know I’m not good at it. I never was. But I just – what I’m looking for, with Ashmole 782, I thought all along it would tell me how to mend our family, and I know it won’t, but if the search is what does that instead, or what causes me to ultimately lose the rest of it – ”

“Peace.” Asher holds up a hand. Then he gets to his feet again, crosses the solar, and looks down at his son, even as Flynn is actively struggling to hold back tears. “You do not need to tell me everything right now, Garcia, nor yet to justify yourself to me. If nothing else, I know that you are who you say, because no imposter would love our family so much, nor be so terrified at the thought of failing them. But it is not only me, is it? You have all lost something, someone else. I am not the only tragedy you have borne.”

“No.” Flynn closes his eyes hard. “No, you’re not.”

Asher reaches out and puts both hands on his shoulders, gripping hard, as Flynn’s fragile self-control almost blows apart completely. He reaches up convulsively and puts his hands on his father’s, trying to hold onto him, to be safe. He was never a child with Asher, of course, and he barely remembers his human father, except that he was angry, and he often hit. Flynn wanted to be him but was terrified of him at the same time, and it was no labor to leave Dalmatia and never look back, to go find a new life in Gaul. Asher is the only father he has ever known and ever loved, even though he became his son as an adult. They remain there, saying nothing, until Asher comes to himself and lets go, lightly stepping back. “Is there something I may do, to assist in this quest?”

“I don’t know.” Flynn feels wrung out, drained, exhausted in a way far beyond the mortal. “Maybe. We’ve already used a whole month and barely made any progress. I told you that I couldn’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”

“I will remain here in the Old Lodge until the situation acquires some more clarity,” Asher says. “To your feet, Garcia. I wish to more properly meet your wife.”

Flynn pauses, then gets up, leading the way out of the solar and down the steps. Lucy has gotten dressed in the interim, though the speed with which she appears suggests that she heard Gabriel storm out and has been anxiously waiting to see how the rest of this went. Part of Flynn’s heart shakes with unbearable joy; he has always wanted for Lucy to meet Asher and vice versa, yet thought of course that was impossible. “Ah,” he says, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Lucy, this is my father, Lord Asher de Clermont. Papa, this is – this is Lucy.”

“It is my honor.” Asher bows over Lucy’s timidly offered hand, as if she isn’t sure that he won’t jump up and snap it off like a shark. Flynn can see his father’s eyes flick to the de Clermont signet ring that Lucy wears on her little finger, the one Maria gave her before they left the present. “I understand that you have known us… differently, but as my son’s wife, you are assured, for the moment, of my protection.”

Lucy’s gaze turns questioningly to Flynn, clearly asking how much he told Asher, and he gives her a look in hopes of communicating that they will discuss this later. The visitors’ quarters are quickly made up for Asher, and a few of the servants blink at being informed that this is my lord’s father, as he and Flynn look close to the same age. Then he accompanies Flynn and Lucy into the master bedchamber, and they fetch the now-blank Ashmole pages and the half-vanished alchemical wedding for his inspection. “Does this…” Flynn is almost afraid of what the answer might be. “Does this mean anything to you?”

Asher studies the parchment fragments with a thoughtful frown, muttering something under his breath. He runs a hand over it – then jerks it back. “This is vampire.”

“What?” Flynn stares at him. “What do you mean?”

“This is vampire,” Asher repeats. “As in, this is made from the tanned hide of one of our own kind. I sense a trace of witch about it as well, and something jumbled that may be daemon. This – what did you call it, Ashmole 782? If this is from it, it is a cruel book indeed. It is made literally from our flesh and blood.”

Flynn and Lucy exchange an aghast look, as if to say that they have been handling it quite casually, and both are repulsed at the idea of having to touch it again. “Someone flayed a vampire for their skin and made it into vellum?” Flynn hopes he isn’t hearing right, though he doesn’t know why he wouldn’t be. “And wrote the Book of Life on the bones of death?”

“I may be wrong.” Asher inspects the other pieces. “But I do not think so.”

“Can you tell anything else about it?” Flynn presses. “We thought Dr. Dee, John Dee, the Queen’s astrologer, he may have written it. But surely he didn’t kill creatures himself?”

“No, I do not think he would have known precisely of its provenance.” Asher does not look up, focused intently on the pages. “What was on here before?”

Lucy explains about the list of names and places that have now vanished, the way the text is a palimpsest hidden and re-hidden within itself, the way it changed itself, how she got the omega on her hand and initially unlocked the secret message, the layers upon layers of mystery around the manuscript and the question if she herself wrote the part of it that led them back here. “It looked like – it _was_ my handwriting,” she says. “And it was in the Latin cipher of the Voynich manuscript, which I think could have served as a specialized code among women and particularly witches. If I taught, or if I _do_ teach it to other witches, like Lady Beaton, or Agnes Sampson, or Amelie Wallis – or if they know it already – ”

Asher looks confused. “Voynich manuscript?”

“Sorry, it became known as that 1912, when Wilfrid Voynich bought it. I don’t know if you would know it by another name. It’s from the early fifteenth century, from the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. I wrote a book about it. Anyway, the handwriting matched.”

“1912.” Asher considers that. “So you come from sometime after that year?”

“Yes, by quite a bit.” Flynn thinks that his father is handling this information much better than he would, but then, that’s the case for everything. “Can you tell anything else about it?”

Asher lifts the pages, turns them over, and inspects them again, but since they’re blank pieces of parchment (or rather, apparently, tanned vampire hide), there’s not much else he can speculate on. “You are trying to find the full manuscript that these folios came from, yes? What do you intend to do with it, if or when you do?”

“I thought we were supposed to read it,” Flynn says. “But now I’m starting to wonder if we’re supposed to destroy it. All the enemies who want it in our own time are nobody who should be allowed to have it, and if it’s that powerful – ”

“It could certainly permanently change the composition of all creatures, as we know them.” Asher puts down the piece and sits back. “This is some chimaera, some thing that is not distinctly vampire, witch, or daemon, but a strange admixture of all three, stronger than anything I have ever seen. Has there ever been anything like this?”

“Not that we know of.” Flynn sits down next to him. “In our time, there’s something called the Covenant. It’s adopted in the seventeenth century, it strictly prohibits vampires, witches, and daemons to marry or have children together. My research has focused on why creature abilities are weakening and we seem to be dying out, and I think it might be the natural result of forced inbreeding in any genetic sample. If you are never exogamous, you replicate and magnify the weaknesses in your DNA, the same reason it’s a bad idea to marry cousins. So if creatures used to be free to intermingle, or relatively so, and then it was forbidden – ”

At this, he is alerted by Asher’s blank look that his father does not understand half of the fancy twenty-first century science words he is using, and starts over in more Elizabethan terms. When he finishes, Asher says, “The Covenant sounds to be an evil thing. Why would the creatures agree to it?”

“Why do any racial and race-based policies get pushed through?” Flynn says. “It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference whether or not they make sense. As long as you appeal to people’s fears and nativist prejudices and whip up hatred against anyone who isn’t like them, they’ll agree to these things. It’s worse with creatures, when we fear each other and are jealous of each other’s abilities and all want to make sure none of the other two get too strong. I know you founded the Knights of Lazarus in part to deal with those kinds of threats, any of the vampires who could pose a risk to the whole world, but knew that if you tried to deal with witches and daemons in the same way, it would be a major incident. We can prune our own bad apples, but not theirs.”

“Indeed,” Asher says slowly. He is wearing the ring that Gabriel wears in the present day, that Gabriel gave to Flynn and Flynn then gave to Wyatt, the sigil of the Order’s grandmaster. “So Ashmole 782 would pose a risk to the entire creature order as your time has known it for – what, near upon three hundred years? No wonder there would be factions interested in either acquiring or suppressing the information. If it did become plain that the creatures could cross species boundaries, that greater abilities were possible – ”

“Has there ever been anyone that you know of?” Flynn asks. “Anyone who had the ability of witch, vampire, and daemon all at once? They would be very dangerous if they chose.”

Asher frowns. “No. I feel oddly as if I should, but I do not. But if there was one such being, I can imagine that they would take especial pains to make sure there was never another. No one to challenge them, or match their abilities, and all under the guise of preserving the bloodlines, of maintaining the integrity of each species. It would be diabolical indeed.”

“Yes,” Flynn says, feeling as if there is something on the tip of his tongue, but unable to precisely voice it. “So Ashmole 782 would be – what? A manual on how to make these sort of hybrids, or how to destroy them?”

“You would know more than I.” Asher looks down at the alchemical wedding image. “Either way, it would be greatly dangerous.”

They work for the rest of the day on whatever they can think of, though with a glance, Flynn and Lucy silently decide not to tell him about Jessica’s book just yet, and the whole situation which appears to be shaping up with that. As far as Flynn knows, Lucy originally intended to send Jessica into the past just for a week or two, a temporary sojourn to break Temple’s thrall over her and keep her away from a vengefully minded Maria, but the fact that she has clearly been in the Renaissance long enough to write a book, and to take refuge at Matthias Corvinus’ court, means that something has gone wrong. She did not automatically return to the present, she might be stuck a hundred years behind them, or – frankly, it could be almost anything. They have no idea at all what has gone on with Jessica, if anyone is still searching for her (they must be) or what happened after she arrived in Florence. It just seems best, for now, not to say anything. Not even to his father.

They emerge for supper that evening, as Asher has kept his taste for the finer things in life; before he met Maria, he was almost as much a playboy as his eldest son (supposedly, at least, as Flynn was obviously not alive then, and finds great difficulty imagining his father that way), and he can still tell down to the year and nearly the vineyard where any given wine was produced. As they are eating, the conversation still not exactly bounteous, Flynn says, “What are we going to do about Gabriel?”

“I will go to Essex tomorrow and attempt to explain as much as I can to him.” Asher looks as if he is about to say something else, then doesn’t. For a vampire, it won’t take much more than an hour, if that, to run out of the city to the New Lodge. “You must be gentle with your brother, Garcia. He is bearing a burden that you do not. . . you do not entirely understand. I will not ask what unspeakable evil have turned the pair of you to rivals, but I can only hope that indeed, it can be averted. It is. . . very difficult for him to see you this way.”

Flynn is about to say that it’s very difficult for _him_ to see Gabriel this way, but he can sense that this might just prove Asher’s point.  He isn’t sure what good it is going to do. Gabriel already knows that it’s not the same Flynn, and he made his opinion very clear. _Broken imposter._ He might be even less impressed to explicitly learn that they winged here from the future, and that it is one in which untold tragedies await them, when he has accused Lucy of wanting to destroy their family only to find out that it is. Presumably Asher is not going to tell Gabriel outright that he himself is dead, but Gabriel isn’t going to be satisfied with the abridged version either. God, this is a mess. Are they even supposed to save him? Is that what the Goddess gave them a chance to do? Or is this something else?

Flynn stares down at his plate, not as if human food is going to fill the void inside him, the gnawing hunger. He hasn’t fed again since that morning with Gabriel, and he very much is going to need to ask Lucy soon, or Asher. Vampire parents are accustomed to feeding their children, just like any parents, and it would be the easiest solution. But as he is still lost in troubled thoughts, there is a sound at the door, and Robert Parry enters, with an apologetic bow for interrupting mealtime. “My lord? Your nephew has returned. He has two parties in tow, a old woman and a boy. Shall I send him in to be received?”

“A boy?” Flynn frowns. He’s relieved that Christian has made it back to London, but while the old woman is presumably – hopefully – Agnes Sampson, he can’t think who the boy would be. Still, trust his soft-hearted nephew to pick up any potential strays along the way, as Christian very much is the kind of person to stop and give money to beggars, or insist to anyone speaking too outrageously about a lady that they apologize, or anything of the sort. “Yes, well. Show them in.”

Parry bows and withdraws. A few moments later, a mud-stained, windblown Christian clomps in, with an elderly woman in a white cap and woolen cloak, and a small, black-haired boy, who looks like a street urchin, trailing in his wake. They remain in the corner as Christian glances around, then looks startled. “Grand-père? What are you doing here?”

“I arrived from Sept-Tours this morning.” Asher nods regally at his grandson, who hurries in to kneel before him, kiss his hand, and pay the proper respects to the head of the family. “I had heard that you were in Scotland?”

“Aye, I was,” Christian says. “I am returned now, though. Aunt Lucy, begging your pardons for the mess, I’ll go and wash before I sit to table.” He glances around it, taking in one rather notable absence from the family dinner, and his bright expression dims. “Where’s Papa?”

There is a slight pause. Then Asher says, “I sent your father back to Essex for the moment. I intend to call upon him tomorrow, so you may accompany me when I do. Now run off and wash, my lad. You really are quite filthy.”

Duly dismissed, Christian scuttles off, and there is a slightly awkward silence as everyone glances over at the newcomers. The boy’s eyes are fixed on the well-laden supper table with an expression as if he does not eat often, and as far as Flynn can tell, he is an ordinary human. They have to wait for Christian to get back to explain what on earth he’s doing here – he could be a pickpocket or other petty criminal, as many of the street children in London have to resort to whatever it takes to survive. But when he reaches for a bread roll on the sideboard, the old woman smacks his hand. “We’ll no be takin’ what doesna belong to us.”

“Agnes Sampson?” Lucy ventures. “Mistress Sampson? Is it yourself?”

“Aye.” The other witch eyes her beadily. “And you’ll be the one that Lady Beaton sent the summons about, askin’ me to be on the lookout for your nephew? As ye will see, he did find me, and I him, and he said it was most pressin’ that I came with him to London. I’ve not traveled this far from Lothian in my life, so I will hope ‘twas worth it.”

“We hope so.” As the de facto hostess, Lucy rises to her feet, and makes a gesture inviting them to sit. Two additional plates of supper are laid, and the boy eats hungrily, with very little regard for table manners or asking permission, like a small wild animal. Asher regards him with a raised eyebrow, then flicks the silent question at Flynn, who is equally stumped. Trying to make conversation, Lucy goes on, “I hope it was not a difficult journey?”

Agnes shrugs. “No worse than could be hoped, though the Englishmen always kick up a fuss about letting Scots into the country. The Border Reivers near gave us trouble as well, but your young nephew there is a fine hand wi’ a sword. You’ll be tellin’ me who all these large and glarin’ vampires are then, aye?”

“Ah, yes.” Lucy flushes. “This is my husband, Sir Garcia Clairmont, Lord Clairmont. This is his father, Lord Asher de Clermont of Sept-Tours, in France.”

“Oh, a Frenchie?” Agnes squints at him. “Always been wary of Frenchmen meself, ken. Though so long as our late Mary lived, raised in France as she was, they were as common as toadstools about Scotland. Now it’s her son, wee James, with his arse upon the throne, and I dinna mind sayin’, I nearly wish the Frenchmen back instead.”

Flynn and Lucy exchange a look, as they know that James VI of Scotland, the future James I of England, is the one who sets up the Berwick tribunal, has Agnes accused and arrested, and takes a slightly too-ghoulish interest in her torture (he remains obsessed with witch hunts throughout his reign). They can’t blame her for anticipatorily disliking him, but that raises the question of whether she can in fact get in contact with future witches, and how much she knows about her own fate. They can’t ask her all the questions they would like with Asher and the boy here, and there is a slightly too-long pause until a markedly cleaner Christian returns. He bows to his grandfather and uncle, takes his place at the table, and seems set to help himself, until Asher says, “Were you planning to explain to your aunt and uncle who this feral child is, that you have brought to burden upon their hospitality?”

“I, ah.” Christian looks guiltily at the boy, who is tearing apart a chicken leg. “I found him near Blackfriars, as we were returning. He says his name is Jack. I couldn’t – I am most sorry, Uncle, he looked so hungry, and he said there was a monster that came to hunt him every night. I just. . . I did not know what else to do, and. . .”

Flynn bites his cheek at his nephew’s hangdog expression. He supposes they cannot grudge a meal to a hungry orphan, though they will have to keep an eye on the silverware. “Thank you,” he says instead. “You’ve done well with Mistress Sampson. I am afraid your father is very angry with me, though, so perhaps you should return to Essex and stay there with – ”

“No, no,” Christian insists. “I want to help you and Aunt Lucy. You said it was for Papa, and this was a grand adventure, I even fought the Reivers. I can do more, Uncle Garcia. Truly.”

“That is what I’m afraid of,” Flynn mutters, half to himself. He can’t think just at the moment how to dissuade Christian from the prospect of what appears to be an exciting occupation, and God, he does ache to spend more time with him. Gabriel might kill him, but Gabriel will likely kill him anyway, the rate they’re going. “I’ll think about it,” he says, louder. “But you still should go with your grandfather tomorrow morning.”

Asher smiles with tolerant affection, glances at Christian, and Flynn almost feels his heart explode with how much he has missed this, these two long-lost members of their family sitting here alive and casually and simply at supper with him. When it is over and the servants are clearing off, he says in an undertone, “Papa, may I – I need to – ”

Asher looks surprised, as he might expect that Flynn was feeding on Lucy, but shrugs and undoes the neck of his doublet. They wait until the others have gone, and Flynn sits down next to his father and leans in to feed. He has not done this much since he was a new vampire, since it was always Gabriel he asked first, but it is familiar and comforting, and Asher rests an affectionate hand on his shoulder as he drinks. Flynn can only hope that he is taking in even a little of his steadiness, his strength.

He’s almost done when there is a muffled, horrified noise from the door, and he jerks back, suddenly terrified that one of the servants who does not know has arrived unawares and has formed any number of incorrect and dangerous conclusions about what is going on. But instead it’s the orphan, Jack, who is staring with glassy, terrified eyes. “Monster,” he whispers, as if he can barely dare to say it. “Thou art the monster!”

Flynn frowns, suddenly remembering what Christian said earlier. He thought that this was just the expected plea from an opportunistic urchin trying to play on a rich patron’s sympathy, but there is real, unfeigned terror in Jack’s expression, and something about the sight of a vampire feeding seems to have set him off. Flynn darts across the room, catches the boy as he tries to escape, and Jack screams and struggles, clearly expecting that he’s the next to be chomped on. Flynn is just worried that this could really turn into a scene, when Asher leans over, stares directly into the boy’s eyes, and Jack goes limp, docile as a pet rabbit. It is both reassuring and unsettling to see the mesmer take hold so quickly.

Asher undoes the dirty kerchief knotted around Jack’s neck, and they both stare at what is revealed beneath. Two crusted, blackened, half-healed wounds are visible in the side of his throat, as if a vampire has fed on him repeatedly and violently, and with no concern or care for the aftermath. The rules requiring vampires to obtain consent from their feeds are by no means universal or enforced in this era, and many of them don’t see the need to do so, but this is different. The boy looks to have been bitten by a set of nasty, gnarled fangs, and blue veins are visible beneath his skin; he has lost a lot of blood at repeated intervals. His monster is no figment of his imagination. His monster is dreadfully real.

Flynn cannot be sure, not entirely. And yet, he thinks of that hooded figure that Lucy saw, that chased her home, that tried to bite Karl before being chased off. Then he says, “Was this done by one of us? A vampire? Or – or who?”

Jack stirs feebly beneath their hands, still under the mesmer, drugged and dreamy. But his lips part, his whisper like a breath of wind. “My lord,” he breathes. “A monster.”


	6. Shadows of the Past

Jiya de Clermont does not go by that name very much. She earned her doctorate under her human last name, Marri, and since Dad also goes by _Flynn_ in all his professional work and business cards and Oxford faculty pages, it’s not as if there has ever been a particular incentive to change it. Legally, it belongs to her, it’s the name under which she’s filed in the Congregation archives in Venice, it became hers the instant she opened her eyes as a starving fledgling in the bloody dust of the San Francisco street, and to some extent, she does think of herself that way. They are her family, that part is straightforward enough, even if she has always had to be careful about addressing Dad as such. They may have fangs, but they’re like any other family, including their ridiculous petty shit and long-held grudges. But in other ways, they stopped being much of one long ago, and the name is the only thing holding them together. In that case, Jiya’s wondered if she should start using it again, a reminder to the rest of them. But she hasn’t. It’s felt easier to just not say anything.

Jiya has no more than scattered memories of her grandfather, Asher. She was a relatively young vampire when he was murdered, and she only met him a few times anyway. Flynn tended to keep himself and his new daughter away from the others – especially Gabriel, who Jiya didn’t meet until almost thirty years after she’d been turned, when the initial surge of bloodlust and blind need had subsided and she was more or less herself again. That wasn’t the only thing keeping them at arm’s length, though. The first time she met her eldest uncle, he was nothing but perfectly courteous, but Cecilia was hovering in the background the entire time. Jiya had thought it was just in case vampires had some tradition of rejecting their weaker young, like animals, and Gabriel tried to cull the herd. She had been warned about him, and she kept a careful, submissive distance; she doesn’t remember if she looked him in the eye the whole time. That was in 1916, at the height of the Great War. It was a fortnight at Sept-Tours. The next time she saw him was at her grandfather’s funeral. At least she thinks she did. That was a haze of grief and madness for everyone involved.

After that, Jiya didn’t have a conversation with her uncle again until 1962, when she moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. She had resigned herself to living in some dingy student flat, but Gabriel unexpectedly offered the use of his glamorous penthouse in the Seventh Arrondissement. There _was_ plenty of room, and since he was out most of the time, at his glittering whirl of society events and business meetings and art appraisals, Jiya had the place to herself, with the exception of Harry. Yet Gabriel, when he was there, seemed to try to get to know her, a little. She remembers nights sitting on the balcony with cigarettes and glasses of wine, looking over the lights of Paris, feeling the live wire of rebellion and protest that ran through the city in the sixties, the avant-garde student community that she was part of. As ever, Gabriel was unfailingly, unceasingly polite. He never said a word about why he might have wanted to kill her, that first time. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe she was imagining it.

They saw each other a bit more after that, at any rate. Jiya moved back to California – it had changed from the nineteenth century, to say the least – to take up her doctoral studies at Caltech, one of the first women admitted. When she graduated, Gabriel took her on a round-the-world trip to celebrate, and she asked how old he was, as they trekked along a mist-shrouded section of the Great Wall of China. This was the seventies, Westerners were vastly uncommon sights in the interior, and it was long before the throngs of camera-wielding tourists; it was just them for miles, in a way that would be impossible today. He told her that he was in the Roman Senate – not actually there, but a member – when Caesar was stabbed. He spoke perfect Mandarin, as he did most languages, and snarled at an official who hassled Jiya for her travel papers at a remote teahouse. When she asked about life in ancient Rome, and Gabriel recounted an amusing story about a drunk youth crashing his chariot into the aqueduct outside his villa, it was the first time in almost a hundred years she had ever seen her uncle laugh.

With what they are doing now, Jiya can’t escape the haunting reminders, the questions, the what-ifs, the reminders that all of them could have been so much more of a family, and it might be too late. She and Rufus have set up a base of operations in Gabriel’s penthouse, since not even Benjamin Cahill is brave enough to attack them here, and they have to live _somewhere._ Jiya refuses to be chased down a hole like a rat, and they have the benefit of access to Gabriel’s things, his papers and books and antiquities and everything else that might help them in what they have to do. Harry, of course, is not here. Jiya knows it’s for a purpose, to help them get close to Nicholas Keynes, the scheming daemon leader on the Congregation, but she still can’t read too many of the things that Harry is saying about the de Clermonts on the creature grapevine. She knows he has to be convincing. It’s the accuracy that stings, even with the worst possible spin deliberately put on it. But he is her friend, he’s hurting over Gabriel too, and some dark part of her can’t help but wonder if he’s started to mean it.

However, it’s not like they have time to sit around and brood. Rufus has built some fiendishly elaborate piece of technology that he has dubbed the TimeMaster 3000, because Rufus is a geek and likes to give things that kind of name, which is supposed to track and register unexpected anomalies or alterations in the historical record. He’s pointed it at the sixteenth century like a satellite collecting signals from deep space, and Jiya has been able to offer incidental consulting advice, but she got her PhD in the 1970s and Rufus got his in 2012. He has studied far more up-to-date technology and theories and scientific papers, and Jiya is starting to feel decidedly obsolete. She has pondered the possibility of returning to school, doing a second one (though only a true masochist would sign up for that) but that is for later. She has had a forty-year academic career already, and yet she’s still working as an assistant in her dad’s lab. Not any more, of course, since her dad is the one in the aforesaid sixteenth century with his… whatever Lucy Preston is. But when he gets back, Jiya might be up for discussing a change.

(God, she hopes he _does_ get back.)

It’s a few days past the new year, and the holidays have been hard. Jiya usually spent them with Dad at their house in Woodstock, not doing much except exchanging a few small presents and having brunch, looking at the tree and going for a chilly afternoon run. Once every ten years or so, Maria insists that the whole family come to Sept-Tours for Christmas, but that never goes to plan. Flynn hides in the library, Gabriel helicopters in from Paris, distributes expensive presents and air kisses to his mother, niece, and Cecilia, and leaves again after ten minutes, and Wyatt constantly goes down to the village to get cell phone reception and make sure he hasn’t missed any Congregation-related issues. If Maria does try to make her sons spend actual time together, arguments inevitably ensue, sometimes spectacular. It’s felt easier for everyone just to let them do their own thing.

It’s been just over a month since Dad and Lucy went to the past, and no major aberrations have cropped up yet. Jiya hopes this is a good sign, though she wishes there was a hint to let her know for sure that they made it. She likes to think there would have been _some_ way of knowing if they had been reduced to interstellar goo (wouldn’t the TimeMaster 3000 detect that?) and the comparative lack of trouble has made her more wary, rather than less. Technically, Cahill, Temple, and Keynes don’t know that they only have six months until Dad and Lucy return. They might think they have as much time as they need, but with their highest-profile rivals out of the way, why not seize the moment? Do they smugly think that Flynn and Lucy were shamed enough to just go into hiding, and don’t know about them timewalking at all? That would be nice, but Jiya will not underestimate them. No matter when it happens, whatever they do, they’re dangerous.

The one thing she can’t overlook is the disappearance of Anton Sokolov, one of the witches on the Congregation, and the only one who has been more or less sympathetic to the de Clermonts’ cause. He and his brother Gennady helped Dad and Uncle Gabriel rescue Lucy after Emma Whitmore kidnapped her, and he was willing to testify on their behalf, only to mysteriously vanish before he could. He hasn’t surfaced again, a flimsy story has been put forth about his resignation on personal principles, and while it smells rotten to Jiya, she has no proof about what actually happened, if anything did. It was clear that Sokolov didn’t approve of Cahill’s tactics and treatment of Lucy, so it’s just possible that he did indeed resign in protest, but the convenient disappearance of the only individual on the Congregation with the ability to throw a wrench in the great power-grab plan should not be written off as mere coincidence. Nobody has heard from the younger Sokolov either. Jiya was hoping that they would be willing to help again, but this seems decidedly more sinister.

She steps out of the shower and dries off, looking around for her clothes. She and Rufus have breakfast this morning with Uncle Wyatt, who has just arrived in Paris and is going to give them an update on how things are going, and Jiya can’t help but feel as if they don’t have enough to report. They did build the TimeMaster, and perhaps it’s better that all has been quiet on the home front, but it feels uneasily like the calm before a storm. Like they’re being put off their guard, or if they haven’t seen what their enemies are doing, the careful, strategic preparation for a major explosion, until it’s too late. Once again, Jiya has to fight the feeling, half-comforting and half-terrifying, that she would just _know_ if something was permanently wrong. Wouldn’t she? God, she doesn’t know how to do this.

Jiya zones out, shakes herself, gets dressed, does her makeup, and hurries out to get her jacket and her boyfriend. It’s a misty, cold, grey January morning, it’s been raining enough that there are flood warnings on the Seine, and she and Rufus stay close together under the umbrella as they walk down to the sidewalk café where they’re meeting her uncle. A whiff of warm, boulangerie-scented air hits them as they step inside, and Jiya spots him in a corner, distractedly reading _Le Monde_ and sipping a black espresso. He looks unshaven and rumpled, and doesn’t glance up until she calls. Then he jumps, and hurries over.

“Morning,” Wyatt says, kissing Jiya on each cheek in proper French fashion and looking briefly uncertain if he should do the same to Rufus, who to their mutual relief quickly offers him a handshake. “Glad you made it. I thought – well, never mind.”

“Thought what?” Jiya asks, as they make their way over to the table and sit down. She glances at the menu, wondering if she wants to get something. Technically, only Rufus actually needs the food here, but you don’t live in Paris, no matter what species you are, and not take advantage of its culinary pleasures. When the waiter speeds over, Jiya orders an éclair and a cappuccino, and Rufus orders crepes and coffee, his French somewhat less confident than hers, but he’s learning quickly. Once the waiter is gone, she glances back at her uncle. “You look like – well, what’s been going on? Is Grand-mère all right?”

 _“Maman_ is fine, last time I spoke to her.” Wyatt shifts uncomfortably, as it cannot have escaped his attention that a large part of Maria de Clermont’s anger is due to the witch who temporarily murdered her eldest son evading her grasp. That witch is Wyatt’s ex, Jessica Proctor, who has not yet reappeared in the present after Lucy sent her to Renaissance Italy. “I got her settled at our estate in Scotland. She doesn’t like it very much, she says it rains all the time. Which it does, but it’s safer for her there. The Knights have caught at least three separate creature spies sniffing around Sept-Tours.”

“Spies?” Jiya says sharply. “Whose?”

“I’m not sure.” Wyatt rubs his dark-circled eyes. With both his older brothers gone, one in a magical coma and the other at large in Tudor London, he is currently the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus, and it’s clear that the burden is wearing on him. “Or if it matters. It could be anyone. The Congregation has turned into three separate factions, witch, daemon, and vampire. None of them are talking or sharing information anymore. It’s just three species plotting against each other, the one thing it was, with all its problems, supposed to avoid. Maybe it’s a good thing I got out when I did. All right, you know. Was spectacularly fired in front of everyone and made it all worse.”

“Hey.” Jiya reaches out to put a hand on her uncle’s. “It’s not your fault. Cahill and Temple set you up from the start. Is Cecilia with Grand-mère?”

“Yes, they’re in Scotland together,” Wyatt says, polishing off the rest of his espresso and looking up to order another as the waiter arrives with Jiya and Rufus’s breakfasts. Maybe he’s hoping that if he drinks enough caffeine, he can get some of it to affect him. “At least there hasn’t been an attempt on the Schloss in Liechtenstein, I don’t think anyone knows about that yet. Let’s hope they don’t, anyway.”

At that, all three of them glance around the café, in case one of those spies is sitting in the corner in a trilby and trench coat and preparing to convey this sensitive intelligence to their evil overlords, but it’s just busy, distracted Parisians doing what Parisians do best, which is not giving a shit about the rest of the world. The Knights’ secret fortress in Liechtenstein, high in the rugged Swiss Alps, is where Gabriel has been hidden until Dad and Lucy return with the manticore venom antidote, and any attack there would mean that their plans and their intelligence have been intercepted to a possibly fatal degree. Jiya takes a bite of her éclair, then thinks of something. “What you said about the Congregation – did Harry tell you that? So that whole plan is working?”

“He did, yes,” Wyatt says. “But we have to be careful about meeting too many times or even passing information indirectly. As you’ve probably noticed, he’s doing a damn good job of acting like he hates us, and we can’t put that in jeopardy.”

“Do you know anything about what they’re doing?” Jiya presses. “Now that they have a clear field, they have to be taking advantage of that, don’t they? Has anyone heard from Anton Sokolov at all?”

“No.” Wyatt’s lips set into a thin line. “Cahill appointed Emma Whitmore as his replacement, which – given that she was working with Temple to kidnap Lucy – seems highly likely to blow up in his face. Maybe he knows about that, I can’t be sure. Harry only has access to Keynes’ part of the plotting, and Keynes still doesn’t completely trust him, so his information is limited. It’s every creature for themselves, pretty much.”

Jiya takes that in grimly. She is familiar with Emma, who has fought Dad on a few notorious occasions before, and the red-haired witch is as ruthless and power-hungry as it gets. She’ll work with Cahill only so far as it gets her closer to the ultimate goal, and she’s already crossed creature lines to take up with Temple, a vampire, when Cahill was too inept for her tastes. Maybe they should appreciate this evidence of interspecies cooperation despite the increasing air of apartheid, but it’s the exact kind they do not need. “Do they know about Dad and Lucy?” she asks quietly. “Are they doing anything about that?”

“I can’t be sure.” Wyatt’s brow furrows. “None of them have openly said anything about the sixteenth century, and timewalking is a very rare skill. If there was another witch who had it, there would have been some kind of attempt to find them. I don’t know if they can go after Flynn and Lucy directly. Maybe they’re just waiting to set a trap when they get back?”

Maybe, but Jiya can’t shake the feeling that they would be unwise to discount the possibility of something they don’t know about at all. She takes another bite of her éclair, as Wyatt looks at Rufus. “Have you registered anything on that time-tracking gizmo thing of yours?”

“Only the equivalent of subsonic vibrations,” Rufus says. “Some things have changed, but not the kind that leaves traceable quantum signatures or long-term consequences. Plus, the whole ‘don’t change anything in the past or you’ll come back to a reality where the Nazis won WWII’ trope of time-travel movies is bullshit. History is made up of countless trillions of different choices and outcomes and systems and lives, and one person’s ability to conclusively affect that matrix is basically in the six-figure negatives. Even if Flynn and Lucy went into Queen Elizabeth’s court and I don’t know, hosted _Star Wars_ movie night, it probably wouldn’t impact too much on the future. There are tons of stories about random weird shit and unexplained historical coincidences and all the stuff that even scientists don’t know about the universe. People always compartmentalize and come up with explanations and the world keeps rolling anyway. At least until we destroy it, because we’re terrible.”

“So that means what?” Wyatt prods. “In real terms?”

“So any changes they’ve made thus far, almost four hundred and twenty-eight years ago, are still not impacting in any measurable way on us, and are statistically wildly unlikely to do so.” Rufus looks around for a napkin, as if in sudden need to scribble equations. “The daily life of two Elizabethan aristocrats would have to be really, really outrageous, long-term and permanently, to achieve visible changes in the present, and six months isn’t enough time for it anyway. I stopped scanning for macro-changes on like, day three. I’ve refined the sensors as fine as they can go, looking for tiny fluctuations. Since the past normally is a closed loop, and nothing more happens in it, the fact that I _am_ getting those fluctuations means that Flynn and Lucy are there and they’re doing things, but any huge spike would be super bad. I know we’re supposed to monitor these anomalies, but they’re so small that I can’t get any identifying data from them or any understanding of what they’re up to. Sorry. I don’t know if you were expecting the blow-by-blow report, but it doesn’t work like that.”

“Thanks for doing it anyway,” Wyatt says. “It’s better to have it than not. But maybe…” He hesitates, as if not sure he should be suggesting this, but can’t hold himself back. “Maybe you should point it at the fifteenth century too, just to be sure. We haven’t – I mean, I’m pretty sure Jessica still hasn’t returned to the present. Which is a good thing, since Temple would probably just put her right back in thralldom if she did. But wasn’t she supposed to just be there for a week or so?”

“Yeah, but Lucy wasn’t exactly a pro at timewalking,” Jiya warns. “I’m not sure she could just fill in a return date like she was buying a plane ticket. And since we’re still not telling Grand-mère, do you really think you should be digging at this?”

Wyatt grimaces. “I feel bad about not telling her, I really do. But I need to keep her safe in Scotland, and… I just would rather nothing happened to Jess if I could avoid it. You know. I owe her that much.”

Jiya regards her uncle, as she can tell that despite his denials and deflections, and obvious need to prioritize his family’s safety over the witch who nearly killed both his brothers, he is still very much in love with her. Besides, Jessica is admittedly a wild card that needs to be accounted for, and if Temple is making some sort of evil plan on that end, which is almost assured, they should probably know about it. “Okay,” she says, glancing at Rufus. “We’ll scan when we get home, just to be sure. Any news on the Ashmole 782 front?”

“Not that I know of.” Wyatt finishes his second espresso. “It’s still missing, nobody’s been able to get it out of the Bodleian as usual, and the creatures seem to have gotten frustrated and left Oxford. Most of them apparently feel that it was another false alarm, and all the excitement has died down. The only thing I can think of that might be related is that the Knight of Lazarus who guards the archives in Venice got in contact with me, several days ago. He was doing a routine inventory when he noticed that several of the restricted files had been accessed, moved around, paged through, and he doesn’t know who it was. They did it carefully enough to avoid him noticing, and there’s some pretty nasty stuff in there.”

“Isn’t that the guy who’s had that job since 1822?” In Jiya’s opinion, it’s not altogether surprising that a fusty old librarian is losing a step or two. “I know you can’t exactly go to Venice yourself right now, but shouldn’t you get someone who’s more, well, awake?”

“I can’t just fire him, unfortunately,” Wyatt says. “So – ”

“You’re the acting grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus,” Jiya reminds him. “Technically you could, if there had been dereliction of duty. Shouldn’t he know who’s snooping in his own archives?”

Wyatt looks uncomfortable, since he is clearly not prepared to actually throw his weight around and expect his decisions to be respected. “Maybe,” he admits. “Apparently there are also rumors of a break-in at a crypt under Poveglia, the haunted island in the lagoon. Nobody goes there anymore, but strange things have been happening. I swear that sounds familiar for some reason, but I’d have to look into it.”

“Poveglia? Haunted island? Oh hell no.” Rufus rears back like a cobra. “I watched one of those ghost hunter specials on that place, at like three AM when I couldn’t sleep. Of course, I also couldn’t sleep after that, because I was friggin’ terrified. If you people have actual demons there or whatever the shit, that’s definitely something we do _not_ need.”

“There was a mark of Lazarus on the door,” Wyatt says. “My father’s mark. It was broken.”

“Grand-père?” Jiya has an odd sensation, though she can’t say what. After all, she was just thinking about him earlier, that ever-present feeling that she has missed much of her own family’s life, and never has a chance to get it back. “Was he involved with that?”

“I don’t know,” Wyatt says. “He might have been. He did plenty of things on his own that he didn’t tell us about. If anyone, he would have told Gabriel, but we obviously can’t ask Gabriel anything right now. I was definitely too far down the food chain, and I don’t think anyone ever expected for me to end up in charge. Now…”

“You’re doing the best you can,” Jiya tells her uncle loyally. “I know it.”

“Scuse me,” Rufus says. “I really do have a lot of sympathy for your weird vampire family problems, I promise. But can we go back to the part where some idiot broke into the clearly cursed tomb and now there’s supreme evil running around? What, some teenagers got drunk and did it on a dare? Wouldn’t they get, like, Nazi-face-melted first?”

“I don’t think anyone could break in by accident.” Wyatt reaches distractedly for Jiya’s coffee, which she does not appear to be drinking fast enough, and she signals the waiter to bring another. “There was heavy-duty stuff on that door, complicated magic, other things, that only a witch could get through.”

“Cahill?” Jiya has no difficulty seeing him masterminding this kind of nefarious plot, but the only problem with that sentence is the ‘mastermind’. Cunning and evil though he is, Cahill doesn’t always strike her as terribly smart. He already managed to bungle things enough that Emma was open to offers from the other side of the tracks, and he’s a powerful witch, but an unexceptional one. “Maybe he sent someone down there to have a sniff?”

“It’s possible.” Wyatt looks even more haggard and grey-faced. “Like I said, I need to look into it. I already did a quick check, but I couldn’t find any references to anything or anyone buried under Poveglia. I went through the records, but if someone was meddling with them, they could have taken out anything incriminating. Either that, or the Congregation just straight-up removed it. It wouldn’t be the first time. I obviously know how they work. They weren’t real big on freedom of information.”

“Great.” Rufus rolls his eyes at the heavens. “Something wicked this way comes, and the magical censorship police won’t even tell us what. That’s _super_ helpful.”

“I know.” Wyatt reaches for the fresh coffee and takes another sip, clearly willing it to work by main force. “I’ll turn over everything I can. In return, you guys will check the fifteenth century when you get home? Just in case?”

“We will,” Jiya promises. “I mean, like Rufus said, I’m not sure we’ll get anything, but if we do, we’ll let you know. Just… I wish we weren’t lying to Grand-mère about it.”

“Obviously, I wish we weren’t either.” Wyatt sighs. “It doesn’t make me feel great to keep this from her, that’s for sure. But when Flynn and Lucy get back with the antidote and we save Gabriel anyway, it won’t matter, right?”

Jiya doesn’t answer. None of them need her to point out that that “when” is by no means a sure thing, and if it isn’t, Maria de Clermont might be spurred to even greater heights of vengeance. She would never hurt her own family, of course, but she might spare no effort on tracking Jessica down, timewalking or no timewalking, and not stop until she did. Jiya was kept away from the worst of her grandmother’s rages after her grandfather was murdered, but she’s still heard some gory stories. And they can’t survive losing someone else, another head of the family, the cornerstone that Uncle Gabriel became, especially after Grand-père. They’re barely holding on by their fingernails now. Another death is beyond sadistic, irrecoverable. Not that that makes any difference to anyone, but still.

“Yeah,” Jiya says, as stoutly as possible. “Yeah, it’ll be fine.”

Wyatt looks at her ruefully, well aware that they are both engaged in a spot of comfortable lying, and they leave the subject of Jessica there. He has a few other things to update them on, promises that he’s looking for Anton and Gennady Sokolov, then at the end of breakfast, says that he needs to get to the Gare de Bercy if he’s going to catch the train to Clermont. He’s going to Sept-Tours to check on everything, make sure the house is safe and there haven’t been any more break-ins. If the Knights can assure him of its security, he’ll think about moving Maria back from Scotland, which she is vociferous in her desire to leave immediately, and even Wyatt has to admit that his native land is, at this time of year especially, a bleak and horrible place. He pays the tab, they walk out into the clearing mist, and Jiya hugs her uncle and kisses him on the cheek. “Let us know, all right?”

“I will. Same to you.” Wyatt hugs her again, offers another handshake to Rufus, and claps on his fedora. He’s one of the few men who can still wear one without looking like an instant douche. “Good luck.”

With that, he strides off among the midmorning crowds, and Rufus and Jiya watch him go. They don’t need to race home, and casually mentioning that she is Gabriel de Clermont’s niece has gotten Jiya into all kinds of places she never imagined. She feels guilty about taking advantage of it, especially when he himself is not there, but they could use the tiniest bit of a holiday, even in a terrible way. Rufus is trying to keep up on long-distance work for Mansfield, back in Oxford, since he of course did not have the leisure of just fucking off from his lectureship whenever he wanted. At the moment, they’re in the break between Michaelmas and Hilary terms, so that’s fine, but when it starts again, he is going to be reading and marking essays and equation sets from students and flying back once a week for tutorials. He wants to stay and support Jiya as much as possible, but he does have his own life and career to think about. As he says, he can’t throw that all down the drain for creepy supernatural supreme evil, no matter how alarming.

They take hands and walk along the Seine bank, since you know, city of lovers and all. It’s the first glimpse of sun, sodden or otherwise, that they’ve seen in weeks. Rufus has proven rather adorably conscientious about making sure that Jiya is not affected by the common vampire stereotypes; they went to see Notre Dame, or rather for him to see it, since she’s been there plenty, and he was very worried that all the crosses and relics and holy water might cause her to vomit up blood or worse. She has explained how that works, that it’s mostly young ones, fledglings, that are repelled by it, and at the vampire age of a hundred and thirty, she has mostly settled in. They’ve not really discussed the whole immortal/mortal thing, or him being a human, or any of that. Everything feels tenuous and fragile enough as it is. They might as well just be happy while they can. Anything else is not guaranteed.

After they’ve taken the long way back, they loop around, reach Gabriel’s building, and head inside, taking the private elevator up to the penthouse. Jiya is admittedly more paranoid than usual that someone has inside while they were out, but everything looks the same as ever. Rufus goes to get the TimeMaster 3000, and there follows a lot of rather entertaining swearing as he tries to recalibrate it to scan the late fifteenth century. Finally, when Rufus has threatened that he is going to smash it into bolts (which he won’t, obviously), something dings, he lets out a triumphant shout and fist-pumps, and a new set of quantum data flashes onto its readout. They’ve done this a hundred times already, and never gotten anything from Dad and Lucy, so Jiya isn’t expecting anything different. There, fine, they have kept their promise to Wyatt, and can call him back and assure him that –

The TimeMaster 3000 makes a noise that neither of them have heard before. A blip pops up, and stays there even through the rapid-fire scrolling. Then it comes to a halt, pulsing like a red laser dot. It flashes silently and insistently, as Jiya whirls around to stare at Rufus. “Weren’t you telling Uncle Wyatt that it would have to be something seriously major to come up on our end?”

“I.” Rufus looks shaken. “Yeah, I was just saying that, wasn’t I?”

“What’s this, then?” Jiya bends closer to it. “Is it some kind of bug, or – ”

That is the hopeful option, but they both know this probably isn’t a system glitch. If nothing else, Rufus is too good an engineer for that, and they worked out most of the kinks when they first built it. He bends over the console and types frantically, refining and repositioning, and finally gets the dot placed on a map. It’s centered in Bologna, Italy, and by zooming in as far as he can and cross-checking with Google, Rufus verifies that it is one of the buildings of the University of Bologna. Once he’s gone to their website and clicked around for ages, he narrows that down to the medieval and early modern history library. Something is in the University of Bologna library that has not been there before, and while it is entirely possible that one of their academics went out and acquired something for the collections in the usual way, the TimeMaster 3000 has proven that that is not the case. Whatever is there has not tangibly or properly existed in the fabric of time until now, and for it to flash up like this means that it has the potential for major, devastating consequences. They stare at the blinking dot until their eyes go out of focus. Then Jiya says, “We have to go to Bologna.”

“Probably, but…” Rufus runs a hand over his face in frustration. “What the hell do we say? We don’t know what this is or what to do with it, and even if we do find it, it’s not like we can just steal it out of the archives. That would _really_ get us in trouble, and – ”

“Leave that to me.” Jiya’s mind is whirring. She goes into the master bedroom – she’s left it as it is, it felt sacrilegious to sleep in here, so she and Rufus are in the guest room – and digs through Gabriel’s top drawer until she finds one of his business cards. He is, obviously, an extremely well-known art and antiquities dealer and connoisseur, and if she can convince the University of Bologna that she is acting on her uncle’s behalf (which is not strictly inaccurate) there could be at least a chance of seeing it. It will be very tricky if they ask to actually call him and get his approval, and they might be inclined to be stubborn and keep it for the betterment of public education rather than crassly pawning it off to some capitalist pig who wants it for his trophy case. Which a) they can’t be blamed for, but b) isn’t really what is happening, and c) is a problem for later anyway. Can they get to Bologna today? There are sleeper trains, and even if she didn’t have Rufus to account for, it’s longer than Jiya feels like running on foot. Or there would be a flight, but she doesn’t know if that would be quicker.

Jiya packs, while Rufus, bless his heart, has already hopped on the laptop and started researching travel options. He announces that they could in fact fly tonight, but Air France wants a mint for the direct route to Bologna, and the train requires eight hours overnight in the Milan station, which seems gross. Money is no issue for the de Clermonts, although Jiya has tried to live off her own salary more than family wealth, and as a lab assistant, that is not bounteous. However, now is not the time for principles, and if they have the means, they might as well ruthlessly take advantage of them. Jiya pulls out the credit card with her real name on it, they book the tickets, and since there is not much point sitting around here to fret and pace, finish their packing, lock up, and head for Charles de Gaulle.

It takes them a while to get through security, since Rufus is reluctant to put the TimeMaster 3000 through an X-ray machine and has to explain to the airport staff in extenuating detail that he is a scientist and it is _not_ a bomb. It’s enough of a hassle that Jiya wonders if they should call the whole thing off and take the train instead, and finally, feeling bad about it but once more deciding that this is an all-hands-on-deck situation, she reaches for the vampire mesmer and calmly, soothingly, convincingly suggests to the officials that everything is fine and Rufus has cleared it up and they can go. Once this has finally worked and they have made it to the far side of the screening area, Rufus stares at her in awe and a slight tinge of fear. “Wow. Did you just – hypnotize them or something?”

“It’s called the mesmer. It’s a holdover from when vampires had to – you know, get feeds in other ways. We can usually get a human to do what we say and calm down, so – ”

“So they won’t be mad about you chomping on their jugular?” Rufus is usually pretty sensitive about the whole thing, but you can’t argue with his bluntness there. “I mean, uh, when you’ve fed on me, it’s felt pretty good, but I’m guessing that wasn’t the main objective back in the olden days.”

“Not really.” Jiya doesn’t know for sure, since when she was sired in the late nineteenth century, there were already plenty of laws and codes of conduct and other bureaucracy dealing with how a vampire was supposed to treat a feed. In case that’s not what he’s worried about, she adds quickly, “You know I would never do that to you, Rufus, right? I’m not going to just… trick you into doing whatever, and I doubt it would work that well on you anyway. It’s for people who don’t know it’s coming and are more suggestible, unaware, open to influence. You could probably resist me. At least if you tried a few times.”

“Is that something we should train me how to do?” Rufus asks, low-voiced, as they make their way into the terminal. “If another evil vampire pops up and tries to bamboozle me or put me into thrall – if Temple could do that to Jessica, who’s a witch, he wouldn’t break a sweat doing it to me, Ordinary Joe. What if someone tries to use me to hurt you? I don’t want that.”

Jiya looks at him tenderly, since she is touched that Rufus went almost that fast from being worried about the fact that she could mind-control people, to worrying that that power could be focused through him to hurt her. “You’re not Ordinary Joe,” she says. “You’re special, all right? You’re amazing. And we’re definitely not going to let anyone do anything to that big, beautiful brain of yours. If you really want me to teach you how to resist the mesmer, we can add it to the list. But I swear, Rufus, I will do anything to protect you, all right? I will.”

As she says that, she has a vision of the daemon that she killed in an alley in Oxford, the first time she actually outright murdered anyone, and how she has felt not quite like herself ever since, tainted somehow, shaken, soiled. She knows that murder is hardly uncommon among her family, that her grandmother, uncles, and father have all killed countless people, and while he was alive, no matter how noble, her grandfather did too. Most of the kills have been for some good purpose, to prevent a greater evil, but by no means all of them. Dad had that centuries-long campaign of vengeance. Grand-mère tore apart witches who had only the most tangential connection to Grand-père’s death. Both of her uncles have been soldiers for hundreds of years, and no soldier has clean hands. It’s not that Jiya judges them, and it’s not that she’s afraid of them, but it has forced her to reckon with that predator’s blood, that darker urge, in herself. In some ways, she’s scared that if she did start killing on a regular basis, it would be too easy to continue. Under the polish and poise, the wealth and sophistication, the unending life, the accomplishments, the intelligence, the good looks, everything that the de Clermonts have and do, they are still monsters.

She is distracted as they sit by the gate, waiting to board, and finally shuffle onto the plane. It’s a flight of just under two hours to Bologna, so they’ll be there tonight, but too late to pay a visit to the university. Jiya has a hunch that whatever has turned up in the library is connected to Jessica – after all, who else can be making new things in the fifteenth century, causing changes, ripples that have fetched up on the shore? If it’s made it this far, it has some kind of long-term survival, untold effects on the people and places that it has encountered in five hundred-plus years. But what?

They push back from the gate and take off, as Jiya stares anxiously out the window at the city lights falling away beneath them and Rufus dozes on her shoulder. She misses Dad. She wasn’t expecting to as much as she does. After all, their relationship has always been strange, tentative, truncated. He has protected her, he never failed in his sire duties, he fed her and nursed her through the blood hungers like any other caring parent with a newborn. But they’re still more comfortable acting like professional colleagues than father and daughter, he’s only just started to let her call him that unqualifiedly, and now he’s gone to the goddamn Elizabethan era to save the world. She is proud of him and she loves him and she doesn’t want him not to. But still.

The world slips below in a twilight haze, and it’s only another hour-odd until they’re starting the descent into Bologna. Rufus snorts and wakes up, rubbing his eyes and apologizing for the snooze, and they land, collect their things, and shuffle off. Since Jiya has a French passport, she can sail through the EU arrival gates, while Rufus, on his American one, has to go through customs proper. Fortunately, it’s late enough that it’s not that busy, and they get an Uber into the city center, looking around for a hotel that is not too expensive and within convenient walking distance of the Piazza San Giovanni in Monte, where they will be addressing themselves tomorrow. A group of Italian guys with slick gelled hair wolf-whistle at Jiya, Rufus swells indignantly, and she lays a comforting hand on his arm. Then she smiles at them complete with full fangs, and they practically trip over their shoes running away, shouting in horror, and actually crossing themselves. You know, sometimes there are perks.

They finally end up in a plain but comfortable hotel a few minutes off the piazza, and Rufus barely manages to change out of his clothes before he crashes into bed. Jiya is also tired, in a different way, and crawls in next to him, deciding that she’ll ask about a feed when he is more compos mentis. She is going to need all her wits if they are going to pull this off.

She falls asleep soon after, wakes up the next morning, and digs out her smart skirt, blouse, and jacket, attempting to look like someone that an uber-wealthy art dealer would send to make an offer on a valuable piece. She does her hair and makeup, Rufus has also brought a button-up shirt, jacket, and slacks, and they have managed to make themselves two percent respectable as they head out. By day, Bologna is an attractive historical city, and the university claims to be the oldest in the world (the Western world, at least, as Al-Azhar University in Egypt was founded in the tenth century by the Fatimids). They stop to get a coffee and pastry, and Jiya thinks that while they’re in the neighborhood, they could pop by Venice and find out what the hell (literally) is up with Poveglia and the break-in at the tomb. But a de Clermont, even one from the junior branch of the family, turning up there would throw red flags like crazy, and Wyatt said he was going to look into it. One thing at a time.

They eat their breakfast (or rather, Rufus does) and Jiya, feeling bad about treating him like cheap takeout, nonetheless asks in an undertone if he can follow her into the bathroom. It is far from the most romantic or tasteful feed she has ever had, but it takes only a few minutes and she feels somewhat more clear-headed when it’s done. She licks at the small wounds in Rufus’s neck to close them, he makes sure that his collar covers them, and they emerge as she hopes that the proprietor doesn’t think they went in there for a quickie. (This _is_ Italy, it would not be the first time.) They double-check the directions on her phone, and set off.

The library is housed in a Renaissance villa of rose-red stone, with arches and columns surrounding a cobbled courtyard and students and researchers coming and going. As they make their way inside, Jiya thinks for an instant that she recognizes one of them, and tries not to spin her head around sharply. She thinks it was one of the creatures who was following them in Oxford, one of the vampires. He’s tall and lean and dashingly good-looking, with a long black ponytail, artful scruff, a leather jacket, and designer jeans, and he’s clearly thinking that the mirrored aviator sunglasses will be enough to throw them off. This is far from an uncommon fashion taste around here, and Jiya can’t be 100% _sure_ that it’s him, but this feels like an unpropitious start.

She turns away before he can notice her, and they go inside and find the curator. Jiya introduces herself more or less confidently as Gabriel de Clermont’s niece, and hands over the business card. “My uncle would like to look at a certain item in your collection,” she says. “Something from the fifteenth century. It may be filed under the name Jessica?”

“Jessica?” The curator looks at her oddly, as if thinking that she might be mispronouncing an Italian word. “From the fifteenth century? That would be unlikely, Signorina de Clermont. The name was not used until after Shakespeare’s _The Merchant of Venice,_ at the end of the sixteenth century. Are you sure that is it?”

“Yes.” Jiya wonders how badly they might be messing up literary history, but that is definitely on the lower end of the scale. “Could you look?”

“The items held in the university collections are not normally made available to private buyers, signorina. I could perhaps arrange for you to consult it, but – ”

“My uncle just needs to compare it with something else he has,” Jiya lies swiftly. “We’re not looking to buy this one. I realize that ordinarily we should have phoned ahead, but you know, he is very busy, and – ”

It takes several more minutes of this, but Gabriel de Clermont is Gabriel de Clermont, and the curator finally goes off to look. Jiya really hopes that this is not another Ashmole 782 situation, where there’s only one person who can get this damn book (she thinks it’s likely to be a book) out of the archive, but the vampire outside seems to have covered his bases just in case. Should she go and see if he’s still there, or would that be even more suspicious? It has occurred to her that she could try mesmering the curator into handing over the book, but that would definitely cause trouble, and she doesn’t want to get anyone fired. This may be something of a naïve concern when the stakes are what they are, but still.

The curator returns with a surprised expression and beckons Jiya and Rufus to follow him. They step into his office, where he shuts the door and indicates the book that he has laid out carefully on foam wedges. It is definitely very old, pages browned and spine fraying, and Jiya feels it like a punch in the stomach as she reads the title page and the author. A history of the republic of Venice, by Jessica Proctor. Maybe that’s why it’s ended up in an Italian university collection, and she wonders if she can ask the curator if they have an ownership history for this item, who they might have bought it from, or if they just won’t remember. As she’s still staring, the curator says, “Is this the item, signorina?”

“Ah – yes. Yes, I think so.” Jiya tries to sound casual. “If we could look at it – ”

The curator somewhat grudgingly allows that they can, and Jiya turns the fine, translucent pages, trying to reconcile the book’s obvious and venerable age with the woman she saw in front of her, an ordinary modern person, just a few months ago. Knowing that people have gone into the past is one thing, but seeing the proof is something else, and if Jessica has been resident in the fifteenth century long enough to write this, something has definitely not gone according to plan. Jiya checks the date: 1484. This would be one of the early printed books after Gutenberg did his thing in the 1440s, and the words resemble gothic handwriting rather than type. Jiya squints, as she is a scientist and not a paleography expert, and tries to look as if she knows what she is doing. The book is written in English, which is a surprise since it’s about Venice, but not since Jiya knows who wrote it, and it could have been intended for an English audience anyway. Or – for what? Did Jessica just decide to settle down and live out her days in the fifteenth century? Wyatt might not be happy about that, but at least it would mean that she survived. But this book is significant enough to ping on the TimeMaster 3000, and that means it’s dangerous. It can change things.

After a preliminary examination, however, Jiya can’t find what that might be. She would have to read it in depth, but she obviously can’t take it out of the collection, and isn’t sure what shape it might be in when she gave it back. If she is going to convince the curator otherwise, she will have to deliberately and intensively mesmer him, and no matter if she used a little mojo on the airport officials, this feels like another step down a dangerous path. They need time to confer anyway, so she thanks the curator, says that they will return later, and heads out.

“So?” Rufus says, once they are back in the gauzy sunlight. “Did you see anything? It was definitely her book, but was it magical, or – whatever?”

“I don’t know.” Jiya glances over her shoulder for the Gucci model, but she doesn’t see him. “The fact that it exists means that she was, or has been, in the fifteenth century for a long time, but I can’t be sure what that means, or how.”

“We can’t just leave it here, can we?” Rufus clearly does not want to propose that they steal it, but if not, it’s like ignoring an active bomb, especially with Venice just two hours’ drive to the north. Any of the Congregation members could pop down here at their leisure and have a look, and Temple can’t be happy about losing his thrall, must be searching for any way to get her back. “Couldn’t you just do whatever you did at the airport?”

“I don’t want that to be the first plan, but…” Jiya trails off, wondering if she really has room for scruples. Tender sensibilities about free will and institutional responsibility and not wanting to _cause a fuss,_ when the future (and past) of so much hangs in the balance. “Hold on, I’m going to call Uncle Wyatt. Maybe he’ll have some advice.”

Rufus gives her a fish eye, as if to say that if Wyatt has any realistic or rational advice where Jessica is concerned, he’d be very surprised. He is charitable enough not to say so, at any rate, and Jiya steps off to a private corner of the piazza while Rufus vigilantly keeps a lookout for marauding vampires. She pulls out her phone and dials Wyatt.

It takes him a few rings to pick up, but he does, sounding harried. “Jiya? Everything okay?”

“I… hope so? I – there’s something you should know. We scanned the fifteenth century when we got home, like we promised, and something did turn up.”

“What?” Wyatt practically shouts, and quickly has to moderate himself. “Are you still in Paris? Did something happen?”

“Hold on.” With that, Jiya explains the mysterious appearance of a book in the University of Bologna archives, a book that Jessica wrote, and how she still hasn’t cracked what exactly it means, but it probably isn’t good. “So,” she finishes. “We can’t just leave it here, but we also can’t just swipe it either. I need to look at it again and see if there’s something else, and I – I was hoping you could tell me what to do. If you knew.”

She can hear Wyatt blow out a breath, as if to say damned if he does. “When did you say it was from again?”

“1484. I don’t know what year Lucy sent her to exactly, but it had to be around there. So that’s a hundred and six years behind Dad and Lucy, but if Jessica could still be in some – ”

“What? 1484?” Wyatt swears under his breath. “Oh, shit.”

“Why? What happened in 1484?”

“On December 5, 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued the bull _Summis desiderantes,_ ” Wyatt says grimly. “On request of the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, who wanted explicit authority to persecute witchcraft in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, granting him broad powers to investigate, try, and torture magicians and witches. You probably know Kramer as the author of the _Malleus Maleficarum,_ which appeared in about 1486. It did get condemned fairly quickly by the church, but that doesn’t matter. If Jessica is a witch in 1484, she’s pretty much got a giant target on her back. This – Jesus.”

“The _Malleus?”_ Jiya has in fact heard of it, as one of the most famous witch-hunting handbooks of the Renaissance, notable for its raging misogyny and homophobia and other delightful things. “Wait, she landed right when that was written? Or at least when Kramer really went off the rails with being a dick? Are you sure?”

“I was alive in 1484,” Wyatt reminds her. “The Knights of Lazarus were called in trying to get innocent witches and ordinary human women alike to safety, Gabriel and Garcia and I were all part of that. So yes, I’m sure.”

“Right.” Jiya looks up at the sky. “But Kramer’s in Germany, and Jessica is in Italy. And you said that the church changes its mind pretty quickly about sanctioning him, so – ”

“Not until a few years after it’s published!” Wyatt is definitely getting agitated. “And that’s just the start of witch hunts in Europe anyway, you know that! If Jessica – ”

“Maybe,” Jiya interrupts. “But what are we supposed to do about it? None of us are witches, much less timewalking witches. Uncle Wyatt, I’m sorry, I know you want to protect her, but we all stuck our necks out and took a pretty big risk to save Jessica once. She’s smart, this is her period of specialty, I’m sure she knows exactly what’s going on. She’ll take all the reasonable steps to keep herself out of danger.”

It sounds slightly strange in Jiya’s mouth to be talking about Jessica in the present tense, when this is over five hundred years ago, but welcome to time travel. There’s another pause. Then Wyatt says, “Yes, but if Temple knows where she is, _when_ she is – ”

“That’s bad,” Jiya admits. “But he can’t timewalk either, as far as we know. He’s still in the present. Otherwise, he definitely would have gone after Dad and Lucy, right? This is not a great situation, but we don’t have proof that he knows about it. I don’t want to destroy the book, obviously, and it would get us in trouble, but – ”

“There could be other copies,” Wyatt says. “Even if you got rid of this one, you couldn’t guarantee that he’d never see one.”

“No.” Jiya’s stomach feels leaden. “No, I couldn’t.”

The line goes silent on both ends for several moments. Wyatt is clearly trying to control his panic, his knee-jerk reaction to rush in and save Jessica again no matter the cost, and Jiya isn’t sure what to tell him to talk him down. The book is important and dangerous, that’s already been established, and she still doesn’t know what to do about it. She is also sensing that as Rufus suspected, Wyatt, bless his heart, is something less than an objective advisor on the situation, and they have already gotten themselves into enough messes on this front. Trying to change the subject, she says, “Is Sept-Tours looking all right?”

“I think so. I’m here right now, it’s…” Wyatt pauses. “It’s very strange. To be in this place by myself. The Knights on guard say there haven’t been any more spies, but I can’t just move _Maman_ back the first time there are a few uneventful days. They could be holding off, trying to lull us into a false sense of security. I’m going to go upstairs in a bit and look through Papa’s old things, see if there’s anything that could explain what the hell he put under Poveglia. Anything else for now?”

“I… I’m not sure, but there’s a chance that one of the creatures I saw in Oxford followed us here. A vampire. Looks very handsome-bad-boy, black hair, stylish dresser. Does that sound like anyone you can think of?”

“Most vampires look handsome-bad-boy,” Wyatt points out, which is not inaccurate. “And if there are other creatures being drawn to Jessica’s book, someone else already knows about it. Watch your back, all right? Do you want me to send some Knights?”

“I’ll probably handle it.” Jiya hasn’t met many of them, but they are a little too self-important and humorless for her tastes. “But I’ll call you again soon. Okay?”

Wyatt hesitates. “Okay.”

With that, they hang up, and Jiya makes her way over to Rufus, who glances up. “Well? What are we doing?”

“I still don’t know.” Jiya sits down next to him. “We’ll have to go back this afternoon and see if there’s anything else we can wring out of it. Apparently 1484 was the year that there was a papal bull really kicking the witch hunt into high gear, so Uncle Wyatt’s not happy about that. He’s trying to see if there’s anything in Grand-père’s things that will explain the break-in at Poveglia.”

“Welp.” Rufus sighs. “I mean, that’s clearly something outrageously evil, I’m not sure why we need more information, but I guess it would be helpful to be sure exactly what. I’ve seen horror movies, I know how this goes. Why didn’t your grandpa just kill it?”

“If it’s a tomb, that implies he did kill it,” Jiya says. “But someone could have brought it back to life, or done something else. Anyway, did you by any chance see a guy, tall, with black hair and sunglasses? Watching us, or – ?”

“This is Italy,” Rufus says. “That describes literally every single dude around here. You’ll have to be a little more specific.”

“I might have seen one of the creatures from Oxford earlier,” Jiya says. “A vampire. Looks like a cool artiste. Black hair, ponytail, jeans, that whole vibe. If someone’s following us, I just want to know about it.”

“I’ll be sure to tell you if I see Goth Edward Cullen.” Rufus glances around, just in case, but the piazza is presently free of such individuals. “So should we head back, or…?”

“I guess so.” Jiya can’t think of anything else, though she’s not sure what they’ll tell the curator that she hadn’t already thought of an hour ago. “Come on.”

They return to the library and inveigle the curator to get the book out again, though he’s probably wondering what exactly Gabriel de Clermont and/or his purported client actually want with it. Jiya looks carefully through every page while Rufus glances up at the window every so often, and by the end of the afternoon, she has had to use more than a little mesmer to defray the curator’s suspicions and still found nothing. Except, that is, for a reference to Matthias Corvinus, the guy whose library they were planning to send Flynn’s past self after. Jessica mentioned being at his court and using that library. If Temple reads this book, he will know exactly when and where she is, and more than that, Jiya is pretty sure that Corvinus’s library is precisely the kind of thing that Michael Temple should not get his hands on. He _doesn’t_ have another timewalking witch, does he? He’s probably looking like crazy for one, if nothing else, and they can’t guarantee on him not having one forever, or even much longer. Plus this whole thing with Poveglia, and…

At that, a dark, unformed suspicion swirls through Jiya’s head. She’s not even sure what it is, or what it would be referring to, or if she’s remotely on the right track at all, but if something bad has happened at that place, some kind of evil has been released – Rufus is right, they all know how this goes – it seems unlikely in the extreme that Temple doesn’t know anything about it. _Should_ she go to Venice? Jiya isn’t one of the soldiers in the family, she knows not to underestimate him, and Dad would probably have a heart attack if he knew that she went alone into deliberate danger. But with Jessica’s book and the broken tomb, with all this, with the sense that things are teetering on the very brink – they are all going to have to take risks, before this is over. Jiya wouldn’t bring Rufus, obviously. She isn’t going to expose him to that. But if she’s the only one here to deal with it…

No, no. She can’t act like Garcia Flynn’s daughter, no matter how much she wants to, and charge single-handed at a bunch of bad guys, damn the torpedoes, and blow up everything in her way. Wyatt offered to send her Knights of Lazarus for backup, but they will be conspicuous, and anyone in Venice would recognize them on sight. The Congregation is probably just waiting for the de Clermonts to put another toe wrong, so they can really bring the hammer down. Not that the Congregation exists these days as any kind of meaningful or unified entity, as Wyatt said, but they might be able to pull together again to get rid of their common enemies. They have no friends there, that’s for sure, and Jiya can’t call her grandmother and ask for advice, when there’s no way to explain why she’s in Bologna without fessing up about Jessica. She doesn’t know who, she doesn’t –

At that, she has an idea. It will be tricky without tipping off Grand-mère as well, but there is one other member of the de Clermont family who is useful in a pinch and long accustomed to keeping secrets. After Jiya and Rufus have returned the book to the collections and forced themselves to walk out at an unsuspicious pace, Jiya says, “Hold on, I have to make another call. Why don’t you go around the corner and get some –  wait, no. If there are strange vampires following us, I don’t want you out of sight. I just… one second.”

While Rufus is blinking at her in some concern, Jiya steps just out of earshot, but where she can still keep an eye on him, and takes out her phone again. She scrolls through it, hits the button, and waits tensely.

Cecilia answers on the last ring. “Jiya,” she says, somewhat surprised. “Are you looking for Madame? She is out. Hunting.”

“I – no. I was – I actually hoping to talk to you.” Jiya clears her throat awkwardly. “Are you alone?”

There is a pause. Then Cecilia says, “It is just me, yes.”

“Okay, good.” Jiya doesn’t want to tell Cecilia all this directly, even as she suspects that the chatelaine knows full well that they did something with Jessica and have been keeping it from Maria. “I thought there was a chance I might have to go to Venice, and I was just wondering, if so, if you might be able to come and help me.”

“Venice?” She can almost hear Cecilia arching both eyebrows. “That is not a safe place for any of us to be right now, you know that.”

“I know, but I just…” Jiya is bursting to tell her, since Cecilia is the one person that she, that they, that all of them have trusted for so long, the honorary member of their family who was sired by one of their greatest enemies, but has held them together in all of their worst tragedies. “Did Wyatt tell you about this weird break-in in Poveglia?”

“He mentioned something about that when we spoke earlier,” Cecilia says. “Yes.”

“Is there any chance Grand-mère would know? Surely if Grand-père was involved, he would have told her. They did not have any secrets from each other, everyone always said so.”

“She may,” Cecilia allows. “I will have to ask her when she returns. Perhaps your uncle said, but she does not care for Scotland at all. She has taken to spending long hours hunting.”

“I know he was hoping to move you two back to Sept-Tours as soon as he could,” Jiya says. “He went there after we met in Paris yesterday, he’s looking into it. But…”

She trails off. It still seems foolhardy to suggest that they crash into Venice themselves. Cecilia is a formidably competent woman in many ways, and no mean hand at fighting (her father won the Battle of Hastings, he would be disappointed if she was anything else) but if Jiya asks her to do this, to keep this huge secret from Madame, it’s going to compound an already significant betrayal. No matter what Jiya and Wyatt have assured each other about Flynn and Lucy getting back with the antidote and fixing Gabriel and having everything be fine, they know you can’t just handwave things like that. Maria may be brought to understand, but it’s not guaranteed that she will forgive immediately, or at all. She doesn’t, not really. As much as all three of the de Clermont sons have struggled with their tendency to violence, they come by it honestly. Maria can be the most terrifying of them all, and they know it’s unfair. But it’s just seemed… Jiya doesn’t even know. “Easier” isn’t it. And yet.

“Do not do anything foolish,” Cecilia says crisply, apparently reading Jiya’s mind. “You are still in Paris just now, are you not?”

“I…” It is absolutely horrible to lie to Cecilia, and Jiya doesn’t want to be caught out later. “We’re in Bologna, actually. Italy. Something came up when Rufus scanned the fifteenth century, and – anyway. Ask Uncle Wyatt, if you talk to him again.”

“I shall do that,” Cecilia says. “But while you are there, perhaps think of – ”

At that, suddenly, she stops. Jiya hears her make a brief, confused sound, as if she has looked around sharply at an unexpected intrusion. “Cecilia?” she says, anxiety revving up. “Cecilia, is everything – ”

There’s a clunk as if the phone has been dropped, and then a crash and shatter of breaking glass, thumps, shouting, and Cecilia snarling – and someone else, there’s someone else there, and it isn’t Maria. Jiya yells ever more frantically, as if that is going to do a goddamn thing for something happening in the Scottish Highlands, but Cecilia doesn’t answer, hands full with fighting the intruder. Finally, there’s a noise as if she’s hit the ground and is grabbing frantically for the phone. “Jiya,” she manages, strangled, half-understandable. “Jiya, it’s – ”

She doesn’t finish the sentence. There’s a crack, a thump, and something that sounds horribly like Cecilia, of all people, screaming in pain. Then it cuts off in a gurgle, the phone line turns into silent, dead air, and with a click, there is nothing more.


	7. A Little Drop of Poison

It is very late by the time Flynn and Lucy finally get to bed. He, of course, is still completely stunned, and she is also feeling the need to get out of sight and, at least for a little while, be relieved of the obligation to act as if she knows what is going on and is in control of it, pinky swear. Between Asher, Christian, Agnes, and this stray kid, Jack, the house is quite full, and Lucy doesn’t mind giving up her quarters to Agnes anyway. Once again, she is not going to get to sleep in, as they will have to be up bright and early for church tomorrow, and they lie there side by side, staring up at the curtains of the great bed, neither of them entirely certain how to sum up the day’s whirlwind events. Finally Lucy says, “Your father. Wow.”

“Indeed.” Flynn shudders with a half-restrained sigh. “I – perhaps I should have thought, but he was in France the whole time before, I didn’t think he’d actually – that he would come to London. I’m happy he did, don’t get me wrong, but this makes it… complicated.”

Lucy turns her head on the pillow to glance at him. She knows that far from the question of whether Asher can help them with Ashmole 782 and all that, which to some degree he has already done, this leaves Flynn stuck with a truly unenviable Sophie’s Choice. Now that Asher knows some of the truth, that they’ve traveled here from the future and that that future is far from happy, the de Clermonts torn apart by tragedy and permanently estranged, do they have a responsibility to tell him the rest of it? Does Flynn want to make his own father the guardian of an action that won’t happen for another hundred and seventy-two years, to try to change the circumstances that lead to Christian’s murder? Asher is accustomed to strange and unusual burdens, as the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus and the patriarch of the most powerful vampire family in Europe, but that would be the worst. It would alter everything that happened with Matej, with Past Flynn, with Gabriel, with the entire situation that they could return to – and besides, they don’t even know if this scale of meddling with the past is permissible or safe. After all, history, once it’s done, becomes set, concrete, relied upon to proceed in a predictable fashion and stack up to build the present. Going in there and randomly yanking fuses is not a great idea. Of course Flynn wants to save Christian, Lucy can already tell that and she did not expect anything else, but either they tell Asher and make a mess, or keep it from him and, once again, break their hearts.

“I just…” Flynn starts again. “I know it’s going to happen, that Christian’s going to die, and technically, right now, I’m not responsible for it. But ultimately, I am. I’m the one who brings Matej to Sept-Tours, I’m the one who couldn’t kill him even when I should have, I…” He stops, throat working, and his hand closes convulsively over Lucy’s. It is much larger than hers, but she feels as if she’s the one bearing him up. “Seeing him here, alive and happy, and my father, and just _knowing_ the awful things that are going to happen to both of them, and how much we’re going to suffer without them… why did we timewalk, huh? Why did we timewalk, except to save the people we love, to fix everything that’s broken? We were told to get an antidote for Gabriel, and we will, but the others – ”

“I can’t imagine what it’s like,” Lucy says. She moves closer, tucking herself into his side, and Flynn wraps his arm around her, their hands interlocking on his chest. She presses a kiss to his shoulder, can feel him vibrating like a plucked harp string. “But I’m not sure what we can do.”

“Maybe we tell Asher the rest,” Flynn says recklessly. “Or no, wait. Maybe we bring both of them back with us, when we return to the future. They can’t be dead if we bring them with us, alive. There is nothing, _nothing_ in this entire life, in all my centuries of existence, that I want more than to walk into Sept-Tours with Papa, and see my mother’s face.”

“I know, I know.” Lucy rubs her hand over the line of his collarbone, cupping his face, turning him to her for a kiss. Flynn clings ferociously, willing her to give him hope, to tell him that it’s possible, and she hates with her entire heart to have to utter the next words. “But we can’t do that.”

Something shadowed falls behind his eyes. “Why?”

“Because if your father and Christian just disappear from the sixteenth century, what do you think that will do? Even if we somehow got everyone to believe that we were actually family from the future and were taking them away for their own safety – and I don’t see Gabriel doing that, by the way – then what? You make your family live without them for four hundred years anyway, you make Gabriel lose his son two hundred years earlier, and who knows what would happen in the centuries to come, if Asher isn’t there to do whatever he does as grandmaster of the Knights? If we walked back into Sept-Tours with them in the present day, your mother wouldn’t have seen her husband murdered in 1944. She would have lost him centuries ago, in 1590, and she’d think that we killed him. Or worse, she… it wouldn’t be what you were expecting. Maybe she wouldn’t _want_ to see him again. Maybe she would have managed to heal, or found someone else, or…”

“My parents never loved anyone the way they loved each other.” Flynn’s voice is tight. “She would be happy either way. I know she would.”

“We don’t know,” Lucy says quietly, hating that she has to be the one to say this to him, when she knows he’s grasping at straws and been given simultaneously the best and the worst thing possible. “It would change the history you want to fix, it would create more problems that we can’t foresee, and we don’t know if moving them out of the time where they’re supposed to exist, violently transplanting them almost half a millennium into the future, would be a good idea. The universe would know they don’t belong there, like white blood cells sent to attack an infection, it could be – ”

“You sound like Rufus.” By Flynn’s tone, he doesn’t mean it as a compliment. “We don’t know that any of that would happen.”

“Exactly. We don’t _know._ And it wouldn’t fix your family. It would just change the wounds, make them even deeper, spread out the pain and twist everything up again. Garcia, we – ”

“So what?” Something like a snarl lurks in his voice, almost enough to make Lucy pull her hand away. “We just leave and let them both die again?”

“It’s history. It already happened. We can save Gabriel, that’s what we came here to do.” She cups his face, trying to get his eyes to focus on her, but they remain bleak and black and empty. “Garcia, listen to me. We have to be on the same side in this.”

After a pause, Flynn curls his hand around hers and squeezes, wordlessly apologizing for the fright, but he doesn’t back down. “We were talking about it with Agnes,” he says. “How it might be our responsibility if we could stop what happened to her, and we didn’t. This isn’t just history now, this is real. This is my family, Lucy. Even if we did change things, how could we possibly make it worse? We have already lived through hell, what does it matter?”

“Believe me,” Lucy says. “If there was any way I could think of, any way that wouldn’t run this kind of risk, that wouldn’t be what you were trying to do, I would help you. You know, you _know_ I would. Sweetheart, please. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, and I hate with my entire soul to ask you to endure it, but still.”

Flynn doesn’t answer. It’s clear that he’s staying silent rather than saying something that he might regret, and the tension has wound him too tightly to move without exploding. His fingers make slow circles on the inside of her palm, and he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it, but it is clearly not a conciliation. Then he says, “Jack, that boy Christian brought home. He saw me feeding on Papa, and it frightened him. We had a look at his neck, and something has clearly been doing the same to him. I’m not sure, but it might be the same thing that attacked you and Meg and Karl in the street a few weeks ago.”

“The hooded…thing? What is it?”

“I have no idea,” Flynn says, “but it has a nasty set of fangs, whatever it is. Feeding on a child as well… that’s flagrantly against the law, and clearly with no regard for him.”

“Why would something do that?” Lucy supposes it’s a moot question where evil hooded demons are involved, but still. “Why a _child?”_

“Because if you drink the blood of something young and fresh and innocent,” Flynn says, “it helps you regain those properties as well. Elizabeth Bathory, the ‘blood countess’ of Hungary, supped on nubile young girls to retain her youth and beauty. But for old or particularly. . . desiccated vampires, drinking repeatedly from a child would be an appealing prospect.”

“Is there one of those around here?” Lucy does not like how any of this is sounding. “Gabriel said that a Father Andrew Hubbard was the head of the London vampires. If there’s some kind of rogue running around attacking children, he should know about it, shouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” Flynn says slowly, “but Hubbard can be… difficult. Gabriel and I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like us. He is constantly paranoid that we, as foreign French noblemen, are going to stage a coup and take over control of London, and he knows that with the de Clermont wealth and power behind us, we could do it. He’ll be even less happy to hear that now Papa is here as well, and he could blame us or think we brought the rogue here with us.”

“But we didn’t,” Lucy says. “It might be a problem, but it didn’t – ”

Flynn looks as if he’s thinking hard about something. Then he says, “If whatever’s been feeding on Jack is the same thing that you saw outside the inn that first Sunday, and then again outside the Pembrokes’ ball, that attacked you on the way home from Lady Beaton’s, it _could_ have come to London because of us. We don’t know.”

“But if it followed us here from somewhen else,” Lucy objects, “it would have to be a witch, a timewalker. And it’s not, it’s a vampire. At least, as far as we can tell.”

“Maybe.” Flynn settles her into the crook of his arm, her head resting on the joint of his shoulder. “It’s something we haven’t seen before, though, and it’s clearly taken a particular interest in us. If we’re keeping him, we should be prepared for anything.”

 _“Are_ we keeping him?” Lucy is not going to insist that they turn him out into the gutter, but a strange and slightly feral street child that is apparently the favored snack of something monstrous doesn’t seem like a comfortable houseguest. “Is that a good idea…?”

“We need to find what’s after us one way or the other,” Flynn says, with slightly chilling matter-of-factness. “It would be easier like this.”

Lucy supposes that’s true, even as she can’t banish a lingering disquiet. It’s clear that Flynn has done anything but give up on the idea of saving Asher and Christian, and while he’s not going to outright use a child as bait to set a trap, he certainly seems a lot more interested in letting Jack stay than he did a few hours ago. She can’t deny the ruthless sense that it makes, in an attempt to flush out whatever dark demon appears to be hunting them, but this is a side of Flynn that she hasn’t seen as much, and it reminds her that as soft as he can be with her, nobody has feared him or fought him down the centuries by accident. He is a formidably competent warrior and a cold-blooded killer when he needs to be, and there is nothing that he will not do in order to protect his family, especially grappling with the guilt of having to lose them again right before his eyes. He’s not off the handle, exactly, but he’s on the edge of a dangerous place, and given that they’re still struggling to connect and communicate right now, Lucy doesn’t want to let him wander off any further alone. She leans down and kisses him, parting his lips with her tongue, and he kisses her back, the two of them content to leave words behind for a few minutes. Then she whispers, “Garcia, let me relax you a bit, okay?”

He glances up at her, considers, then shifts beneath her, wordlessly granting permission. He raises his hand and strokes her hair, and she can feel him struggle to accept each kiss she plants on his skin, on the suit of armor that he wears so impenetrably. In some ways it’s grown there from necessity, as she is seeing for herself the depth of what he has lost and the horror of that tragedy, and all she can do is chip at it, bit by bit, melt the miles-thick carapace of ice in which he has convinced himself that it is best to live. She pulls his nightshirt up, kissing her way down the rugged, dark-furred line of his chest, biting at each hipbone, before she takes him slowly and thoroughly into her mouth. Flynn bucks up and utters an inarticulate sound, grasping at her hair. There is so much tension in him that Lucy doubts one single orgasm can solve it, but she’ll do her best.

She sucks and licks with deliberate attention, until he starts swearing in a language other than English, which means she’s doing it right. His free hand claws at the sheets, and his heels dig into the bed. He is clearly making a tremendous effort not to rise up like lightning and flip her over, the way that threw them off so much back at Denise and Michelle’s, and Lucy doesn’t want to pressure him or force him past anything he’s comfortable with. But the tension that this adds is backfiring on her aim of relaxing him, and she pulls back, letting him slip out of her mouth, though she leans down to kiss the deep groove of hip and groin. Then she whispers, “It’s all right. You could – you could try.”

Flynn’s face is standing in cold sweat, eyes half-unfocused with the strain of controlling himself. He utters an inarticulate noise, clawing at her, cupping the back of her head in his hand and pulling her up to his mouth for a savage, greedy kiss. Then he pants, “We should – church tomorrow, we – ”

“Oh for the love of – ” Lucy loves this fool with her whole heart, she does, but trust him to derail this with the reminder that it’s late and they have to get up and be conspicuously virtuous in the morning. “Garcia – ”

Despite her best efforts, it comes out as a needy little whine, and he glances at her in surprise, as if he hasn’t realized it was quite that bad. (Of course he hasn’t.) He runs his hands down her sides, as she rolls her hips against him and both of them groan. Then he looks at her and whispers, “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please, yes.” Lucy grips his face in both hands and looks into his eyes. “You can bite me if you want, to be certain. But I – I need – I need you. Please.”

Flynn considers, and then finally decides that all right, he can actually listen to what she’s saying with her mouth for once, rather than God knows what else runs off with him between the ears. He rolls her over as if she’s made of glass, takes hold of her nightgown as Lucy raises her arms so he can pull it off, and once both of them are naked, lies her carefully on her back among the pillows. He gets up on his knees above her, then seems inclined to spend a while kissing her and rubbing her and otherwise making sure she is ready. She pulls at him with a frustrated growl, and at last, slowly, he eases down between her legs, as she reaches up to help guide him. He presses at her entrance, Lucy utters a gasping little whine, and comes down on all fours above her, hands and knees. Slowly, slowly, clearly making sure he does not lose control for a single instant or forget where he is or who he is with, Flynn slides into her for the first time, so carefully that he does not catch or hitch or hurt at any point. She is the one to arch and gulp and swear this time, grabbing at his hips, until he is finally seated to the hilt. He is large enough to fill her just to the point of sweet stretching, and _God,_ it feels good to have him there. She kisses his ear, whispering reassurances, as if he is a skittish horse that might imminently bolt, and they lie entangled.

Flynn lets out a shaky breath, braces his weight on his elbows, and gives her a small nudge, encouraging her to roll him over onto his back so she can be on top and take control. Lucy does so, because she likes being on top anyway, because it’s more practical given the size difference, and because she can sense that it will make him more comfortable if she is the one who sets the pace. He reaches up to take hold of her hips, callused thumbs settling in the hollow of the joint, enacting small adjustments to the fit, as he hits a sweet spot inside her and she moans. They look into each other’s eyes the whole time, and she can tell that he is not going to relax, he is not going to give himself fully over to this. He has to remain vigilantly on guard the whole time, and if there is any chance of hurting her or biting her or mating with her or whatever he’s worried about, he will instantly pull the plug. He will give this to her, and he wants her, but he is so very scared.

Lucy reaches down, gripping hold of his shoulders, letting her hair fall in his face, soothing him with small kisses, as he begins to thrust cautiously, slowly, holding himself back from how fast or hard he could definitely go. It feels damn good anyway, it’s the first time she’s gotten properly laid since at least Noah, and since their relationship fell off the sex wagon a while before they actually broke up, Lucy fears she won’t be able to last that long either. She utters small, helpless, hungry noises in the back of her throat, riding and writhing and grinding on him, taking him deep and then deeper, hitting that spot that makes her see white. Flynn picks up the pace a few notches, but still won’t give himself over to unrestrained release and wild abandon, pulling her and opening her and angling her to receive the best effect of his strokes. He barely blinks, he barely breathes, giving her this silent gesture of trust, and Lucy leans down on top of him, their bare chests pressing together. “It’s all right,” she whispers. “It’s all right. Garcia, look at me, look at me, I’m all right.”

He does, he does not look anywhere else except her eyes, his own wide and white and still afraid, even as their bodies fall into their own rhythm and he grunts, lifting himself against her more and more insistently, desperate for the intimacy and the need and the completion. Lucy digs her fingers into his back, feeling his muscles straining and sliding, the immense immortal strength he is keeping on a ruthless rein. “Jesus,” he mutters hoarsely. _“Moja ljubav, ma lionne.”_

They move faster, Flynn sharply checks himself when they seem on the verge of surpassing whatever strict internal speed limit he has set, and then finally, as he reaches between them to finger her, as both of them have been deprived and drained and gone without for much too long, they lose it within a few seconds of each other. He groans and swears, Lucy collapses on his chest as dazzling whiteness rushes through her, and she feels like a wrung-out rag, hot and wet and trembling. She turns her head and kisses his collarbone and solar plexus, sucks at his nipple, as the climax shivers through her from head to toe. Flynn shudders in silence, hand circling on her back, pressing her against him as she feels him start to soften inside her. “It’s all right,” she whispers again, stroking his face. “It’s all right.”

They lie there like that for several moments longer, until he groans again and lifts her off him with a slick, wet sound as they separate. Lucy settles herself down next to him, her arm over his chest, feeling happy and satiated and tender and sad all at once. He turns his head to kiss her again, and she knows that this was some compromise between them, some milestone that neither of them regret, but still was not exactly how he wanted it to happen. Not because of not wanting her, but because he fears so deeply and intrinsically that he is not what _she_ wants, or that he will never be able to come to her as he truly is, without that lingering terror of something going wrong, or bad, or dangerous. Lucy doesn’t know what to say to convince him, and doesn’t think that words would be any good. She knows what it cost him to give this to her, that it is a demonstration of the depth of the feelings he can’t yet come to terms with or articulate, and cradles his head against her shoulder. “Shh,” she whispers, though he still isn’t making a sound. “Garcia, are you okay?”

“I… yes.” He shudders again, as if he might break, but she can see that the last thing he wants is for her to think he hated it, or did it only grudgingly, or was in pain or resentment at any time. “God, yes. How could I not be? You are so – the most – Lucy, I – I don’t, I’m not – ”

“Shhh.” She runs her fingers over the lines and grooves of his face, the rough shadow of stubble on his cheek, getting him to look up at her with those drowned eyes. “See, look. We did it, we did it and I’m not hurt and you didn’t lose control and nothing happened that we didn’t want. It’s all right, we’re both all right. We are.”

Flynn doesn’t answer, but he pulls her roughly into his arms and tucks her against his chest, under his chin, as if he will hold her there like that until the end of time. And that, no matter anything else, is what Lucy truly wants the most of all: to be partnered, to be held, to be safe and cherished, with someone that she can trust into the darkness of the storm that lies ahead. She settles more closely against him, dreamy and heavy and slow, and falls asleep.

They are woken early the next morning to dress for church, but they steal a quick kiss in the dimness and smile at each other. Perhaps it’s a good thing that Asher and Christian are still asleep. As foreigners without a home parish in the city, they are excused from the need to appear, and besides, both of them still are very much Catholic and have not converted even as a formality. They’re planning to traipse out to Essex this morning and try to talk sense into Gabriel, though Lucy thinks that will take a truly heroic amount of talking (and possibly also shaking, but Asher is the expert, she’ll leave it to him). At least Jack’s monster does not look to have attacked anyone during the night, and they can hopefully start to pick Agnes’ brains about timewalking and antidotes and whatever else later this afternoon. It is one small moment where everything is not going to hell, at least, and that alone should be treasured.

They make their way to the French Huguenot church that Flynn attends and sit in the pews near the front, as Lucy hopes that the preacher won’t be too long-winded. Sermons constitute the large part of everyone’s Sunday entertainment, and can accordingly run on for as long as two or three hours; the megachurch principle of delivering pithy, Tweetable services, pack ‘em in and pack ‘em out, definitely doesn’t exist yet. Listening to a man in a collar harangue them in French about the word of the Lord isn’t exactly Lucy’s idea of a fun time, but fortunately the preacher has managed to keep it to about an hour before. Of course, today appears to be the one time he has discovered something in the Scriptures he really needs to tell them about in great exegetical detail, and by hour two, Lucy’s attention is wandering and she is doing her best not to be caught yawning. When she focuses again, she realizes that in all of the ironies, the preacher is talking about Lazarus. Something something, restored to life by the power of God Almighty. Yet if that is possible, so too could the Devil call a sinner’s soul back to this world, and not even repentance might be enough to save you.

At that, Lucy looks sharply at Flynn, who has clearly also caught the implication and frowns back at her. They can’t be sure, but it sounds as if Père Robard has also heard dark rumors of demons being unloosed in London, and while surely he does not suspect that Lord Clairmont, sitting so devotedly in the front row with his wife, has anything to do with it, this means that the whispers are starting to get around. Once he finally wraps up, and they are on their way home around noon, she says, “He doesn’t know you’re a vampire, right?”

“Of course not.” Flynn looks at her oddly, as if to say that he certainly does not carelessly disclose his supernatural status to random churchmen. “Maybe I can drop by again later and ask just what he was referring to, make sure I receive proper spiritual guidance and all that. But I agree that didn’t sound very promising.”

Lucy doesn’t answer, wondering if she was too optimistic about things not going to hell this morning, as they reach the Old Lodge and head inside for dinner. To her considerable surprise, Asher and Christian have already returned – she was expecting it to take a day or two, if not more – and they are not alone. Gabriel gets to his feet with a flourish as they enter, sashays over, and bows with extravagant deference over her hand, so deeply that she might think he’s mocking her, but the fervor with which he kisses it appears to be sincere. “My sweetest sister,” he says. “I have been most deeply impolite in recent days, and I cry your pardon for my beastly behavior. Please, do let me make it up to you.”

“Ah – ” Lucy isn’t sure how to answer that, or if it is yet another attempted tack or intended manipulation. “So you’re – you’re back, then?”

“Alas, yes.” Gabriel shrugs airily. “My lord father and son came to call upon me this morning in Essex, and I was in _rather_ a state, I suppose. But that’s all water under the bridge, we needn’t worry your lovely head about it an instant longer. Wine?”

Flynn shoots a half-confused, half-wary look at Asher and Christian, clearly asking what the hell they did to him, and Christian says, “When we got there, Papa was a frightful mess, truly. I did not like to see him that way, and I thought – ”

“No, no, my love, nothing’s wrong, nothing.” Gabriel returns to kiss his son’s hair and squeeze his shoulders. “You ran over with such a worried look upon your face, bless your heart, and you were ever so insistent about making it better. You did, of course, and so here I am, the lot of us together again. What was the plan now?”

Flynn winces, though Lucy is the only one who sees it. Indeed, they _are_ together again for the first time in far longer than this Gabriel has any idea, and since Asher is the only one in the know, they can’t go openly talking about their plans. Nor can they exclude Gabriel again without things getting very dicey indeed, and they need to find some way to make the most of this unexpected reconciliation while still walking a knife edge. Flynn and Lucy sit down, the servants enter to lay the meal, and Lucy glances around. “Where’s Agnes?”

“She said she was tired after the journey from Scotland and wished to sleep.” Asher raises one elegant eyebrow. “So the steward informed me before I departed this morning. Whether that meant all day, I cannot be certain. Or perhaps she did not feel entirely at ease in a strange vampire’s house by herself, without my grandson there to mediate.”

“As long as she is not covertly spying, one hopes.” Gabriel laughs, pouring himself a healthy goblet from the decanter. “One witch at that task is enough, indeed. No, my dearest Lucy, I jest, I jest alone. At least you are not covert.”

It’s Lucy’s turn to wince, as no matter his pretty speeches about making things up to her, that is not a very friendly crack. Christian notices it, shooting a chastising look at his father, and Gabriel makes an apologetic gesture. “And I see that I once more fall too swiftly into my bad habits, darling. Please, do come here and smack me, I should altogether deserve it.”

“I’ll smack you if you aren’t careful,” Flynn warns him. “Didn’t Papa explain that Lucy is not a spy? Or – what did he say, exactly?”

“He vouched for her,” Gabriel says, in a bored tone. He flings one leg over the side of the chair, as if suddenly feeling that he was not sitting in it dramatically enough, and takes another long sip of wine. “And I, of course, trust _him._ Hence my shameful discourtesy in implying you are a secret malfeasant, sis. Should I call you that? Now that we are family?”

“Just Lucy is fine.” Lucy uses a small bit of magic to pull the decanter away from him, as if any vampire could manage to get sloshed the old-fashioned way, it’s Gabriel. If nothing else, it will not be for lack of trying. “Would you – do you want to help us?”

Gabriel eyes her up and down, with that majestic, breathtakingly handsome hauteur he does so well, an emperor deigning to hear the pleas of the peasants. “Always, darling. I recall I have offered my services at several points before, to which you have seemed less than receptive. But then, perhaps you are finding satisfaction elsewhere now?”

Lucy blushes before she can stop it, as Flynn chokes on his food and both of them have to spend too long coughing and harrumphing. Gabriel stares at her as if he either was or was not expecting that response, and either way, he does not like it. A muscle works in his cheek, he downs the rest of his wine, and the silence teeters on the openly unpleasant. Asher is watching this sharply, Christian in confusion, and Flynn looks like he wants to vanish down a hole. Then Gabriel says, “Well, darling, my felicitations to you both. One would think it would have happened earlier in a marriage, but then, Garcia has always had to be repeatedly coaxed into doing anything he may accidentally enjoy. Though once again, I ramble. What was this small favor you wished of me? I remain abjectly at your service.”

Flynn glares at his brother, as if to say that Gabriel really doesn’t need to chew the scenery so much (maybe it’s a natural side effect of spending so much time with Marlowe). “Gabriel, go stick your head in a water barrel, then maybe we can talk about – ”

“No, no. I am, unfortunately, sober as a judge.” Gabriel flicks the goblet away like a cat knocking it off a shelf. “Please, darling. What will you have of me?”

From Flynn’s expression, that is a good walloping, but he decides against it. “There is… something in London,” he says. “It may have arrived recently, it’s attacked Lucy at least once and has possibly been following us for much longer. It could be a vampire, though we aren’t sure,  and it’s fed on the orphan boy several times, by the looks of things. If you could track it down, and without getting Father Hubbard involved, we’d be grateful.”

“Oh?” Gabriel leans back in the chair. Lucy honestly thought that nobody in the entire universe could be more of a drama queen than Flynn, but that was before she met this version of his older brother. “And since you’ve come from… _elsewhere,_ and you are not the brother I would otherwise believe you to be, you have some proof of either yourself or this?”

“What are you talking about, Papa?” Christian looks startled. “Of course it’s Uncle Garcia!”

“No, my love.” If Gabriel is aware of either his father or his brother giving him looks that suggest this might be a bad idea, he is splendidly ignoring them. “It is only someone who looks like your uncle, and does not in the least act like him. A poor copy of an unknown magic. I put it rather ungently the other day, which was cruel of me, but the point stands. If I am to undertake secret missions on his _word alone,_ I will need more than the usual proof. Also Christian, now that your errand to Scotland is done, perhaps it is advisable that you no longer fraternize with him. Until we can establish where he has really come from, and what his motives might be with the lot of us.”

“Look, you – ” Flynn starts half to his feet, controls himself, and sits back down, as Lucy thinks that they remind her very much of a divorced couple, fighting over who gets the kids. Perhaps it’s not surprising. Gabriel and Garcia have lived as constant, devoted companions for over seven hundred years by this point, Gabriel turned Christian and saved his life because Garcia was not yet ready to be his father himself, and of course Gabriel is reeling over having his entire life turned upside down. Even Asher’s explanations do not appear to have completely poured oil on the water, and knowing how they are in the present hurts even more. They _don’t_ recover from their ultimate estrangement. It’s not a small thing. It seems almost funny, and then it is terrifically, unbearably, unforgivably sad.

“Look,” Flynn says again, moderating his tone with a clear effort. “I’m still me, all right? I’m still – I’m still Garcia. I can’t do this without your help. If you want, I’ll take you upstairs after this and show you a few things, but fair warning, they’ll look like blank parchment and you’ll think I’m having you on. They’re pieces from a manuscript called Ashmole 782, we told Papa about it yesterday, and he was helping us. That’s most of why we came here.”

Christian is still staring back and forth between Gabriel and Flynn with a startled look on his face. Then he looks worriedly at Lucy. “He did not – you certainly – ?”

“Yes, I knew,” Lucy assures him, laughing a little at Christian’s apparent indignation that Flynn would lie to her like a time-traveling cad. “I traveled with him from – where we came from. And I can promise, he’s still him. Just… older.”

There is a silence as the de Clermonts take that in. There is the obvious fact that she is an outsider, a witch, and far from a reliable witness, but Asher, at least, believed them yesterday, and hopefully he will restrain Gabriel from going any further off the rails. Then Gabriel nods tightly. “Very well,” he says. “You wished me to find some sort of monster, was that it?”

“Yes.” Flynn looks as if he’s going to see if he too can get drunk the old-fashioned way. “Do you think you can do that or not?”

“Oh, I’m quite certain I could, if I found it.” Gabriel shrugs. “And if I do, what were you intending for me to do? Kill it?”

“We need to know what it is and where it came from,” Flynn says. “I don’t want it here, but tell me when you’ve captured it, and we’ll find somewhere to deal with it in private. There is that spot by Smithfield, so – ”

One of Gabriel’s perfect eyebrows lifts, in apparent surprise and gratification that this Flynn does in fact know their secret meeting places and/or suitable locations to interrogate an enemy in private. “That could work,” he allows. “We shall see. I’m anon, darling. So many other people who appreciate my company, you know.”

With that, he swirls to his feet, kisses his son, takes his father’s hand and kisses it too, and does the same for Lucy, before leaving with no acknowledgment for Flynn at all, as if to make him upset that _he_ didn’t get a kiss too. While Flynn is still staring after him as if Gabriel will in fact die in this timeline because he will kill him, Lucy puts a hand on his, and he startles back to the present. “If there is something evil running around the city,” she says, “is there anything to be said for warning the other creature factions? I know how badly interspecies cooperation has gone with the Congregation, but – ”

She bites her tongue, because that doesn’t exist yet, but the reference seems to have gone over Asher and Christian’s heads. Getting the London creatures mixed up in this has the possibility to go very badly, but if they’re unaware, they’re ripe for the picking, and she and Flynn could end up blamed for any large-scale disaster. Putting a few more eyes on the job also can’t hurt; like the rest of London, they are insular, defensive, and paranoid about foreigners. The introduction of a strange new menace is clearly a concern for them, and Flynn, while he’s generally reluctant to have anything to do with people more than he must, nods slowly. “Maybe. We already have a few witches, could get the word out to the vampires, and as far as daemons go, I’m not sure if we really want to have Kit back again, or if he wants to see me, but – ”

“I know a daemon,” Christian puts in unexpectedly. “A Yorkshireman, a member of Lord Montague’s retinue. Well, he was. Lord Montague did not care for him, so he was dismissed. He’s still in London, though. I could bring him here?”

Flynn glances at his nephew with an unreadable expression. He has plainly been rattled by Gabriel’s threat to keep him from seeing Christian, when this is the limited time he will have with him at all, and they’ve already caused enough trouble by sending Christian to Berwick in the first place. But they also can’t openly forbid him, especially when he seems eager to help, and when Lucy doubts Flynn has the heart to actually send him away or insist that he stays out of sight. “Very well,” he says. “Bring him here tomorrow, we’ll have Agnes and Lady Beaton for the witches, and – ”

“If Hubbard hears that such a gathering took place and he was excluded, he will be offended,” Asher warns. “The de Clermonts are French, Garcia. We alone cannot serve as the messengers to English vampires, and your brother has made himself a scandal in every door he darkens, so they shall be even less inclined to listen to him. If you cannot see yourself to go so far as inviting him in person, at least one of his deputies.”

Flynn growls, as this is clearly something he does not want to do, but the fact that Asher is here now and can save their asses with political acumen should be paid attention to. “I will look into it,” he promises his father. “And I thought you were talking Gabriel around?”

“You know as well as I that there is nothing that can truly correct Gabriel from a course he has set his heart upon, no matter how ill-advised.” Asher rises to his feet. “A trait he shares in common with you, I note. Excuse me, I must write to your mother.”

He strides out of the dining room, as Flynn watches him go with a distracted, anxious look and the meal is finished more or less in silence. Lucy goes up to her solar and spends the rest of Sunday afternoon reading, until she is interrupted by a knock on the door, and looks up in surprise. “Yes?”

The door opens. It’s Meg, and she looks uncommonly solemn. Lucy has forged a fairly good relationship with her maid by now, and she frowns. “Is something wrong?”

“I just…” Meg takes a deep breath, twisting her fingers together, and shuts the door behind her. “My lady, I… if I can speak plainly?”

“Yes, of course.” Lucy sets the book aside, turning to her. “What is it?”

“It’s just, you and Mistress Sampson and the other Scottish lady you’ve been seeing…” Meg visibly commends her soul to God, then continues. “I know what you are, and I’m not entirely certain in my heart about it. That night you first visited Lady Beaton, when that thing attacked us in the street, you made fire with your hands and drove it off. I thought I was dreaming, did not know what I had seen, but I did, and I do. The three of you are witches, and as a Christian woman, I cannot be part of any service to the devil. That’s – that it, my lady.”

Lucy eyes her, not sure what to say. She knows that Meg lives in a world where the menace of witchcraft is very real, a combined political, religious, and social threat, treason and murder and blasphemy and sexual deviance all mixed up in a ripe package of early modern existential anxiety, and she is justified in taking it very seriously. Lucy can’t just scoff Meg off or tell her that it’s nothing, and the fact that Meg is telling her this at all, rather than running straight to the magistrate and accusing them, means that she wants Lucy to talk her out of it, to tell her that she’s wrong or mistaken or there is another, more innocuous explanation. At last, Lucy says carefully, “What makes you think so?”

“I was passing outside Mistress Sampson’s door, when I was returning from church.” Meg looks at pains to establish that she was not eavesdropping on the master and mistress’s guests. “She was… she was speaking to something, or someone, though there was naught else in the room. I smelled strange things, and heard her chant in a tongue, and it answered her.”

Lucy thinks that they need to be careful not to get Agnes accused of witchcraft several months ahead of schedule, and with Kit’s matching insinuations on this front, they also need not to get _her_ marched up in front of an inquisitorial court or royal tribunal. After a pause, she says, “We’re not serving the devil, Meg. Maybe we should have told you more, when you were hired, but I promise, we’re not evil, we’re not planning to – well. Any of it.”

Meg regards her warily. At last, having noted what Lucy very clearly did not say, she says, “But you deny not that you are witches? My lady, I… I cannot….”

“I’m still Lucy, all right? I’m still exactly who you met, and I will protect you and your sister and her children, as much as I can.” Lucy gets up and starts toward her, holding out her hands, but Meg flinches back, and she stops. “You can trust me, and as much as I can, I will be honest with you. I was in church this very morning, remember?”

“Aye, you were,” Meg says, looking somewhat comforted. “But it’s always said that the servants of Satan can be clever. My lord – he isn’t – ? He seems… queer. And if it’s the tale that witches sleep with the devil for their powers – ”

Lucy doesn’t know what part of that sentence inadvertently amuses her more, even if they did in fact actually get to the latter bit last night. “Garcia can be difficult, but he’s definitely not the devil, all right? None of us are going to hurt you, Meg. Please, can you trust us?”

Meg considers that. It is clear that she does not want to jeopardize her relatively well-paid and secure position with reckless witchcraft accusations, that she does like Lucy, and is not ungrateful for her saving her from the hooded hellbeast. But she also does not want to get caught covering for traitors, and it is not clear what she thinks, or which way she might be leaning. They remain there, staring awkwardly at each other, until Lucy says, “Please don’t say anything, all right? We’re trying to help, we’re just – please. It’s very important. This is about the lives of a lot of people we love, and… please.”

“I’ll hold my peace,” Meg agrees, after a long pause. “You yourself seem good folk, my lady, and I’d not want to make false accusations. But to know it’s going on beneath this roof, I…” She trails off. “If I’ve given offense, I humbly beg your pardons.”

“No, it’s all right.” Lucy takes another step, carefully, and this time at least, Meg doesn’t flinch back. “I know why it would upset you. We’ll do our best to be… be discreet.”

She isn’t sure how much more discreet they can be, since it’s already their own house and they can’t start hiding even from their own servants, but this answer seems to mollify Meg for the time being, and she curtsies herself out with another apology. Once she’s gone, Lucy sits back down and curses. She really hopes that Walter Raleigh is going to winkle the promised audience with Dr. Dee out of Elizabeth soon, because this is feeling like an increasingly unstable house of cards. One false move, and it all comes crashing down.

She doesn’t sleep much that night, faced with the prospect of hosting a lot of quarrelsome and fractious London creatures for supper tomorrow and trying to convince them to pull together and look out for a common enemy, rather than plotting against each other. Gabriel is still a problem, and now her maid, the one person she felt could be a friend and confidante, is going to be on the lookout for anything too evil. Among all the people she’s met here, she really only has Flynn, and she tucks herself up against him again, the way they have taken to sleeping most nights. She hates to be too clingy, it’s not who she is, but the water is getting deeper and deeper, and if she doesn’t paddle as hard as she can at all times, it will close over her head. It’s an exhausting way to live, and she needs him to be that one place where she can drift, just float, wheel beneath the heavens and the eye of the world. He loves her, but even he can’t fully let himself go around her or think about nothing else, and it wears.

At last, she falls into an uneasy doze, wakes up on Monday morning, and goes downstairs in search of Agnes. She finds her taking the usual breakfast portion of bread and ale, notes that Agnes seems to have made herself quite at home already, and sits down at the table. “Mistress Sampson, I was just wondering if we could have a word?”

“Aye?” Agnes regards her with beady black eyes. “About what?”

“I…” Lucy debates giving her a lecture on being appropriately clandestine, and can’t bring herself to do it. Agnes was alone in her room with the door closed, you can’t get much more clandestine than that, and it was just bad luck that Meg happened to be outside. “One of the reasons we brought you here was for your expertise on potions and antidotes and such. My husband and I are in search of a rather rare one, and we were hoping you would know.”

“Oh?” Agnes takes a healthy sip of ale. “What’s it?”

“Manticore venom.” Lucy has to restrain a sudden, crippling pang of anxiety at saying it, that Agnes will stare at her blankly and say that there is no such creature, or no such cure. “We need an antidote. We can afford to pay whatsoever it may cost, but if you had one, or…”

“Manticore venom?” Agnes’s eyebrows raise across her wrinkled forehead. “That’s no something to be playin’ with, Lady Clairmont. It can kill even bloodsuckers like your lummox of a husband, d’ye ken?”

“I know,” Lucy says, “and that’s why we need it. Someone – another vampire – has been poisoned with it, and if we don’t find the antidote, he will die.”

“I’d best like to examine the patient.” Agnes cocks her head. “Can ye take me to him?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Lady Beaton says that you have served in the past as a point of contact for other timewalkers, and I… well, I’m not from here.”

“Now that was plain enough,” Agnes remarks, if not unkindly. “So the poisoned vampire, he’s in your own year then, aye?”

“Yes.” Lucy wonders if she could in fact take Agnes on a vacation back to the present and request a clinical visit to Gabriel, but they can’t just walk into the Liechtenstein hideout, there’s no guarantee they could get back, and it wouldn’t do much anyway. “So do you know about that, or where we’d start to look?”

“Manticore venom has no common antidote,” Agnes says. “It’s a rare poison, that, and no substance kent to man can heal it. Ye would have to blend and brew it specially, and only a most talented alchemist could manage the formula. But most of them are naught but quacks, at least so far in mine own acquaintance, so I dinna think that you could trust – ”

“An alchemist would have to make it?” If so, it’s doubly imperative that they get to Dee, but it might be a recipe that even he has never heard of. Alchemy is about blending two halves, contrasting ingredients, to make a rarer and more refined, a purified and perfected version, and Lucy wonders in despair if the only antidote to manticore venom is the Philosopher’s Stone and the elixir of life. In other words, the one thing alchemy has been trying to do since its beginning, its Sacred Marriage and its great quest. Nicolas Flamel died in 1418, so there’s no chance of a private consultation (unless, you know, he did discover it and is alive). “Can you recommend anyone?”

“I just said they are quacks, did I no?” Clearly Agnes does not have a very high opinion of alchemists. “And it would not be so simple as throwin’ the lot in a cauldron and leaving it to stew. It would have to take something from the patient, and as he is no here – ”

“We could possibly get something from him,” Lucy says, very carefully. “He’s not here – the exact one who was poisoned, that is – but he is still… here.”

“Ah.” Agnes looks at her very shrewdly. “Someone who’s alive here, in this time, and dead in yours?”

“More or less.” Lucy glances away. “Would that work?”

“It might, I dinna ken.” Agnes considers a moment longer, then finishes off her ale. “No enough of an alchemist myself to say. Aught else ye wished to ask?”

“Yes. We’re trying to contact a witch named Amelie Wallis. I mentioned her briefly to Lady Beaton. She’s born about thirty-six years from now, in Essex. Could you find her?”

“Mayhap. I heard ye are bringin’ Lady Beaton herself tonight, for some sort of creature colloquy. ‘Twould be easier with the three of us, we could try it then. Oh, and.” Agnes reaches up and grabs Lucy’s wrist. “Mind ye that lad, that Jack, that your nephew brought hame. Canna say why, but there’s something I mislike about him.”

A chill goes down Lucy’s back. Jack has been given quarters with the servants, who are looking after him and presumably attempting to wash and feed him, but considering their misgivings about having him here and whatever he might attract, she can’t say that Agnes is wrong. “I think so, yes,” she says. “Speaking of my nephew, do you know where he went?”

“Off to find that daemon friend o’ his.” Agnes munches on her bread. “He’s a good lad, that Christian. I’d be grieved if something happened to him.”

“We all would,” Lucy says reflexively, reminding herself that Agnes may have some sense that something happens to him in the future, and this is not indicative of a more imminent tragedy. “And one other thing. Be careful around my maid, all right? She realized that we were… well, that we’re witches, and she may need some time to come around.”

“No kissin’ the arse of the Prince of Darkness before her, then?”

“Definitely not,” Lucy says firmly. “I’ll leave you in peace now, Mistress Sampson. Good day.”

Even with that accomplished, she feels restless, and does not succeed in getting much done for the rest of the morning. Flynn and Asher are gone again, presumably working on something together, and Lucy isn’t sure whether or not Meg would see a friendly chat as suspicious. She ends up doing needlework for the sheer need to occupy her hands, stabs herself with the needle and finds herself halfway to tears over something so stupid, and sucks away the small drop of blood. She’s tired of this place, how limited and cloistered it leaves her, never expected to be left alone or to go out unsupervised, to remain sedately in the house as a serene mistress of domestic bliss and ensure that everything is managed to perfection. She could stress some more about this supper tonight, though she’s definitely doing that enough, but at that moment, dishonorable as it is, Lucy is sorely tempted to just timewalk home and have that be that. She’d come back, of course – she’s not going to leave Garcia here, or any of them – but she wants a proper shower and to veg out in front of the TV with a bag of M&Ms and to not think about saving the world or any of it. She is so very, very tired. She doesn’t know if she can actually do this, and it seems less certain every day.

It is mid-afternoon when Flynn gets back, looking tired but pleased with himself, and he crosses the solar to pick Lucy up and give her a real kiss. He seems to be less jumpy about casual intimacy since they slept together, at least, and she wraps her arms around his neck as they sway on the spot. “Sir Walter did it,” he announces. “We’re expected at Dr. Dee’s place of residence three days from now, in company with Raleigh himself. Elizabeth has reluctantly granted her approval for us to meet, so long as we don’t get up to any mischief.”

“That’s wonderful!” Lucy’s heart swoops with sick relief, since it is more than time they had a positive development on any front whatsoever. “We – we need to talk to Dee twice over. I asked Agnes about manticore venom this morning, and she said that the antidote would need to be mixed specially by a talented alchemist. If he _is_ the one who wrote Ashmole 782, he would know how to do that, wouldn’t he?”

“We can hope.” Flynn kisses her again, then puts her down. “Come on. We have to smarten up before our bloody guests arrive, don’t we?”

They do their best, both of them clearly wondering just how much they will have to brace themselves for, and go downstairs. Lady Beaton is the first to arrive, exchanging air kisses with Lucy and a somewhat warmer embrace with Agnes, and eyes Asher with a mixture of wariness and intrigue. Even if he is a vampire, he is a very handsome, cultured, and intelligent one, and his French-ness is a mark in his favor rather than against, since Lady Beaton spent so long at the French court with Mary Stuart. They even strike up an animated conversation, and Flynn looks them as if in hopes that this successful vampire-witch interaction will set the tone for the rest of the evening. Then there is another knock, and upon arrival, proves to be none other than the troublesome twosome, Gabriel and Kit. “I did hear there was a meeting of the London creatures here this eve,” Gabriel remarks, “though evidently it was arranged after I myself had gone. Clearly we needed a daemon, so…”

“Ah, yes.” Lucy doesn’t want to tell him that they already had Christian bring his friend, since she needs absolutely no more reasons to insult either of them. She looks at Kit, since from what Flynn told her about how they left things at the Clerkenwell brothel, she wasn’t expecting to see him back. Tentatively, she says, “Good evening, Master Marlowe?”

“My lady.” Kit bows over her hand. “I have been remiss in my manners of late, and I humbly ask your pardons. If I may be of assistance, you must only speak the word.”

“Er, thank you.” Seeing as she just heard something similar from Gabriel, and that proved to be rather flimsy rather quickly, Lucy isn’t sure how much stock she should put in it, but it’s better than open threats to narc on her to the Queen. (There seem to be plenty of other contenders for that title, anyway.) Marlowe’s repentance might be genuine, or he’s putting on a good show in order to get close and continue gathering information; he is a spy, after all. But he takes a goblet of wine and goes in to make himself agreeable, that leaves Lucy with Gabriel, and she lowers her voice. “Have you found that… thing?”

“No, dear sis. I do hope that you are not sending me on a snipe hunt, a pointless quest, to keep me safely out of the way?” Gabriel smiles, with both fangs. “Ah, no, no. Once more, I am too swift to suspect the worst of you, and I mean to do better. I groveled before Kit to accept my apologies, all so I might bring him here tonight for you. Are you not pleased?”

“Er – ” Lucy says again. She’s not sure why she would be, though this seems like a cat proudly dropping a dead mouse before its master in expectation of reward (in fact, everything about Gabriel reminds her of a cat). “Yes, of course, thank you.”

She is just wondering if this is in fact the only way Gabriel can think of to win her friendship and cooperation, if that is actually what he wants, or anything else, when the door opens again, and Christian and his daemon friend are ushered in. The latter is a dark-eyed, rather sullen young man of about twenty, who when he likewise bows over Lucy’s hand and says, “God ye good evenin’, Lady Clairmont,” speaks with a strong Yorkshire accent. “I was told it was a meeting of like-minded companions?”

“It is a meeting of fellow creatures, yes,” Lucy says. “And you would be?”

“My name is Fawkes, my lady.” He straightens up. “Master Guy Fawkes of Clifton, near the city of York.”

Oh, _hell._ Lucy barely manages to keep an expression of shock off her face, especially since Christian is looking at her eagerly and clearly hoping that he has done well. Obviously, it is another fifteen years until Fawkes memorably conspires to blow up the Houses of Parliament and gets himself immortalized in Bonfire Night, but he already has a reputation as a recusant Catholic and rabble-rouser. He goes to fight on the Continent next year and takes up service with Spain – who, it goes without saying, is England’s archrival. He hasn’t actually _done_ the things which will get him hanged, but it’s no wonder that he is attracted to a secret meeting of clandestine conspirators, especially thinking this will then to lead to activities of an explosive nature against the Queen. If Meg doesn’t do them in on charges of witchcraft, she is not likely to be much more fond of scheming Catholics, and Fawkes must think himself vindicated in this interpretation of events by the presence of several fellow Catholics, including Mary Stuart’s old lady-in-waiting – after all, Christian himself is one, that could be a reason that they met. “You know that we’re only meeting to discuss a potential threat to the creatures of London, do you not?”  Lucy says carefully. “And… nothing else?”

Fawkes looks at her oddly, but nods and proceeds into the dining room, as Lucy feels almost on the edge of a panic attack. At that point, Flynn sticks his head out, frowning. “Who was that daemon with Christian? For some reason, he seemed – ?”

“It’s Fawkes,” Lucy says, a little hysterically. “It’s Guy goddamn Fawkes. We are going to get ourselves _killed,_ Garcia. We can’t – ”

Flynn looks briefly horrified by this news, but they can’t kick Fawkes straight back out now without arousing his suspicion. Either way, he seems more concerned for her distress, and speeds over, taking her hands in his. “Lucy. Lucy, it’s all right, it’s all right. He hasn’t actually done anything right now, remember? Though I’ll agree that the absolute last thing we need is another potentially traitorous hothead.”

“You think?” Lucy rubs her temples, where she has developed a more or less permanent low-level migraine. “Now that we’ve received him, we can’t just turf him out without insulting him, can we? And you’re right, we can’t technically punish him for something he hasn’t done, but – ”

“Shh.” Flynn kisses her eyelids and her nose, then gives her a quick peck on the lips. Since the host and hostess do need to attend to their guests, he offers her his arm and escorts her into the dining room, where fortunately no wars have started yet, supernatural or otherwise. He clears his throat in a significant fashion and calls the proceedings to order, as the witches, vampires, and daemons watch him with varying degrees of suspicion. Nobody has openly stood up and shouted an objection yet, at any rate, as Flynn explains that there is something strange and dangerous in the city, and their combined vigilance will be appreciated in apprehending it. No, he does not know exactly what it is. No, it is not his fault that it is here. If they have other questions, that is nice. They can wait for later. Possibly much later.

Lucy is just thinking wryly that much as she loves this man, nobody is about to hire him for his motivational speaking skills, when there is a disturbance at the door and Parry comes rushing through with a harried expression on his face. “My lord, my lady, my deepest apologies. But there is one more caller, and he is – that is, he is rather – ”

The steward does not finish the sentence, because just then, the caller stalks in like Maleficent late for Aurora’s christening, which does not seem entirely inaccurate. Indeed, Lucy’s immediate impression of the man is that he looks like Frollo from _The Hunchback of Notre Dame,_ which makes him a Disney villain twice over. He is tall, thin, and choleric, with a high vicar’s collar, a pinched face, and a coldly severe look like everyone’s least favorite strict math teacher. Lucy has a sudden uncomfortable inkling who he must be, but it is Asher, ever the diplomat, who rises graciously to his feet. “Father Hubbard.”

Hubbard stares around the room without speaking. It’s clear that he hates pretty much everyone in it for a cornucopia of diverse reasons, whether they be Catholics, foreigners, sodomites, poets, witches, daemons, women, or any combination thereof. At last he says, “If I must be here this night, pray God make it swift. It fair reeks of the worst sorts of sin.”

Humorless Calvinist priest that Gabriel hates, indeed. Lucy gets to her feet, hoping to run damage control. “Good evening, Father. You – received an invitation, then?”

“I was told that a creature gathering of some sort was happening, and as the head of the vampires in the city of London – ” Hubbard pronounces that part with exacting precision, as if to be sure that nobody is in any doubt – “my presence would be gratefully welcomed. If I had known it was this gang of felons, I’m not sure I would have troubled myself.”

“So wonderful to see you too, Andrew.” Gabriel gets to his feet as well, which makes everyone instinctively shift to the edge of their chairs. “As cheery as ever, I see. Will you not so much as pay your respects to my brother and sister-in-law, who have been so kind as to receive your wizened arse in their lovely home this evening? Or no, say no more. It is you who are the monster, preying upon young boys to restore your long-fled youth. They say clerics can be fond of sweet young lads in other ways, do they not?”

This is about as contentious an opening line as it is possible to have, and Asher lays a warning hand on his son’s arm, silently but emphatically forcing him to sit back down. Hubbard, for his part, sneers. “If I am not welcome here, among you Frenchmen and females, I shall depart. But if you think to connive or contrive behind my back – ”

“Apologies for my brother,” Flynn says. “He’s an idiot. If you wish to sit with your fellows and listen to what I have to say, you may do that, but – ”

“I have had another interest in coming here.” Hubbard looks around with affected casualness, until his jet-black eyes settle on Lucy. “This tale of a witch who commands old and powerful vampires to do her bidding, and offers so little explanation about from whence she comes or what she means. I know you de Clermonts hate me, but if I was to save you from this baneful scourge, perhaps even you might have to – ”

Flynn hisses and bares his fangs in a clear warning that anyone touches Lucy over his dead body, as a communal angry murmur goes around the room. Lucy thinks that of course the evil priest is going to blame the woman for this mess, and experiences a strong urge to hit him over the head with a frying pan. Not that she has a frying pan or should do that even if she did, but still. “You may hear what my lord husband has to say,” she says, as coolly as she can, “but if you presume to threaten me again – ”

“Presume to threaten you? Oh no, my lady, I merely advise you.” Hubbard continues to stare at her. “All these whispers about you in London, I can scarce sort true from false. If you – ”

“My daughter-in-law has accounted herself to my satisfaction.” Asher de Clermont does not speak loudly, or even stand up again, but the cool command in his voice is clear. “She is not the matter at hand. As you are, as you note, the master of vampires in London, perchance you can tell us about the nature of the beast we have been debating?”

Hubbard hesitates. Lucy can’t tell if he does know and is strategically keeping it quiet, or if he doesn’t know and does not want to fess up, as that will be a clear weakness in front of his rivals. “I know no beast.”

“Just as I thought.” Gabriel gets up again, swaggering closer, provocative and angry. “Then I do not see why we need you here. Scuttle back to your bolt-hole, priest, and – ”

Flynn grabs his arm, just as Hubbard makes a move as if to go for Lucy while they’re distracted. It’s then that Gabriel flashes free from Flynn’s grasp too fast to see, and places himself squarely between them. “You touch one hair on my sweet sister’s head,” he breathes, “you take a single misbegotten notion into your feculent, rotting cesspool of a brain about hurting her smallest finger, and I will break every bone in your body, tear out your beating hart, and eat it blood-raw and dripping. Do you understand me?”

Lucy struggles not to blink, since this is nearly as graphic and elegant a threat as what Gabriel promised to do to her if she hurt Flynn in any way, back at the Pembrokes’ ball. Hubbard might be the leader of the London vampires, but Gabriel is clearly much stronger than him and not playing around with it, and there is a tense pause. Then Hubbard throws them all a scathing look and wheels around to go, cassock swishing. “I will be back,” he promises, over his shoulder. “Mark my words on that.”

“I await it eagerly.” Gabriel blows him the world’s most sarcastic kiss. “Until then.”

Once the door has shut behind Hubbard, Lucy glances sidelong at him, in case that whole scene was just for the benefit of getting one over on a man he hates and it’s now going to return to regularly scheduled indifference. But Gabriel looks surprised and somewhat shaken, as if he himself didn’t know he was going to do that and that when push came remotely to shove, he instantly snapped into defending his brother’s wife, much as he has suspected her before. Indeed, he turns to her with the first hint of real sincerity that she has seen among all his flaming theatrics and looks her up and down, paying no attention to anyone else in the room. She thinks she sees a crumb of something in his eyes, something tender and angry and protective all at once, but she’s not entirely sure what. “So now you’ve met the miserable dung maggot,” he says instead. “I did tell you that he would be no use to anyone.”

“Did you have to pick a fight with him?” Asher looks dubious. “We do not need more enemies, my son. Hubbard can be dangerous, and – ”

“Oh, there was a point to it, Papa.” Gabriel smiles, rakish and dark, and turns to face the room. “I wanted to confirm beyond all doubt, before all these witnesses and the gathered creatures of the city, that Hubbard is lying, and that he means none of us any good. You see, my sweet sister, I did not find the monster itself earlier, no. But I have found _something.”_

“You did?” Lucy frowns. Trust Gabriel, again, to be as dramatic as possible about this reveal, but if this is actually deliberately where he was going with it, and not just another outbreak of pettiness, it does take on a certain aspect of diabolical genius. “What?”

“Hubbard is shielding the monster.” Gabriel leans forward and puts both hands on the table, commanding their attention. “It is not a vampire, exactly. It is something the likes of which we have never seen before, vampire and witch and daemon all at once. Fitting, then, that we are all gathered here to battle it. Hubbard has intended to  make it his own, and as for that – ”

“What is it?” Flynn asks. “Or who?”

Gabriel looks at him for a long moment. He has been, to say the least, free with his opinion that this Flynn is a fake, a shameful replacement that he does not need to care about, that he wants his real brother back, that he does not trust them and will not work with them. But as he looks up at Garcia now, that does not seem to matter, the way it did not when Hubbard threatened Lucy, and at last, Lucy can sense something changing. Gabriel reaches up a hand, brushes his fingers over Flynn’s cheek, and then turns back to the audience. “I know nothing else,” he says. “But I do have a name. Perhaps it means something to one of you, it does not to me. And that is Rittenhouse. David Rittenhouse.”


	8. Fog and Foul Air

“David Rittenhouse?” Lucy says, deeply startled, as the attention of the room, hereto fixed on Gabriel, swivels around to her. “I don’t – that can’t be – that can’t possibly be right, can it?”

“Oh?” Gabriel gives her a sharp look, since she is the one who claimed to know nothing about the monster, and now is having an odd reaction to its supposed name. “Why is that?”

Lucy isn’t sure how to answer. She can’t tell everyone that David Rittenhouse is from the eighteenth century, that he won’t be born until 1732, is a prominent figure in colonial American history and correspondent of the Founding Fathers, and more than that, she has the oddest feeling that she has read that name before. Maybe in one of the sixteenth-birthday letters from her mother, the ones that left her feeling so dissatisfied. She can’t recall the exact reference or the phrasing, but it was mentioned at least once. Lucy thought it was vaguely interesting that Rittenhouse might have had something to do with the creature world as well, but not enough to follow it up or do anything about it, especially when she wanted to distance herself from her mother and her heritage as a witch. How the hell can _this_ be what’s after them in Tudor London?

“Maybe you have the wrong name.” Flynn has apparently also remembered that this is a century and a half too early, and he and Lucy exchange a troubled look. “Are you – ”

“It is quite distinct, is it not?” Gabriel is clearly not about to stand for his investigative skills being slated like this. “Not easy to mistake. And since you two seem to recognize it, perhaps you wish to address the gathering upon this subject?”

“It just…” Lucy doesn’t want to say outright that it sounds like something from where they came from, since that could point the finger of suspicion squarely at them for bringing it. ( _Did_ they bring it?) The ever-delicate creature politics, the uneasy balance between London’s vampires, witches, and daemons, have to be thought of, and the fact of multiple witnesses can cut both ways. They have already chased Father Hubbard out of here in a snit, Lady Beaton is Lucy’s friend and teacher but still wants more information on who they are and where they are from, and Kit Marlowe and Guy Fawkes together are far more trouble than anyone should have to deal with. “I don’t think so?”

Gabriel considers her, then turns back to the gathering. “David Rittenhouse,” he repeats, as if to be sure there is no mistaking it. “Kit, my darling, would you like to confirm that is the name we heard, upon our peregrinations?”

Marlowe rises to his feet; he is vain enough to always welcome a spotlight, no matter where it comes from. Apparently Gabriel dangled the offer of a romantic monster hunt through the London underworld as a symbol of trust to mend fences, and Flynn shoots a look at his brother, as if indignant that Gabriel is taking Kit along for madcap adventures rather than him. This is probably exactly why Gabriel did it, to serve Flynn some of his own medicine. “Indeed,” Kit says. “We pried it out of one of Hubbard’s hive, that we captured and appealed persuasively for information. Lord Gabriel fed upon him and verified ‘twas the truth. We think, as he says, that Hubbard must be concealing the beast at the hive itself in Blackfriars, or at least making no move to disrupt its villainy around the city. How could it operate this long, without challenge, unless by his warrant? Hubbard is not the sort to peaceably suffer tests of his authority otherwise, as we have all for ourselves just seen.”

Flynn and Lucy both shoot a look at Gabriel, since they can tell that “appealed persuasively for information” is code for “caught a local vampire and beat the shit out of him until he talked.” (Then again, this _is_ Gabriel, so maybe he did in fact just seduce him.) It is left to Flynn to raise the obvious objection. “Just because you roughed up one of Hubbard’s vampires – and if so, you both are lucky he did not throw the gauntlet now and here – does not mean that he is personally hiding the beast. The vampire could have heard rumors from anywhere, so if we burst into Blackfriars on mere hearsay – ”

“I thought you would say that,” Gabriel interrupts, with an air of distinct self-satisfaction. “Hence why, as sweet Kit says, I fed upon the wretch to confirm his tale. He has seen it with his own eyes, it was in his memory. A dark hooded figure, demonic in aspect, with great twisted teeth? Why would this spawn of Hubbard’s have seen it himself, and known its name, unless it is being kept there?”

Everyone glances at each other, as this _is_ a compelling point. Lady Beaton looks triumphant, as if she was waiting for an excuse to edge out more turf from her vampire rival, this gives her a golden opportunity. It is Guy Fawkes who offers exactly the sort of solution that you would expect Guy Fawkes to have. “If so, why not send a man in there with a cask of powder, and blow the lot of it to kingdom come?”

“Because that would hardly kill a beast like this,” Gabriel says, irritated. “Nor would it kill any of Hubbard’s hive, but only annoy him most thoroughly. As I said, it is not strictly a vampire, though it is hidden among vampires and clearly feeds like one. It can use magic like a witch, and has the precognition of a daemon. Some sort of monstrous tripartite hybrid.”

The gathered creatures exchange more looks. This is in the days before the Congregation and the Covenant, so interspecies relationships aren’t strictly prohibited – everyone’s objections to Lucy and Flynn have hinged more on their secrecy, breaches of the law, and disparate social status, rather than their being a witch and a vampire – but they’re still not very common. There has always been the underlying anxiety about mixing powers or creating something unable to be controlled or contained, as well as the usual racist bullshit about keeping bloodlines pure and avoiding half-breeds or “mongrels.” Bastardy and illegitimacy are already a major social stigma, so adding this on top is not something that anyone wants. But if this is the same David Rittenhouse from the eighteenth century, he would have been born after the Covenant was already in place, so him being a hybrid would be very definitely against the law. It doesn’t make sense, but none of it does. Is Rittenhouse a timewalker too? Was he sent to the sixteenth century after Lucy and Flynn – but how? By who? Why?

“Even if no by Master Fawkes’ suggestion,” Lady Beaton says, “the beast should be dealt with, and do we not have the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus here among us? Lord de Clermont, wouldna this be your own area of mastery?”

“It sounds akin to what we have done in the past, aye.” Asher has been watching all of this without saying much, but the instant he does speak, he effortlessly commands the room’s attention. “There have been other vampires grown too strong and evil for the safety of us all, who had to be defeated at any cost. My own sons did it in 1307, with Gerbert of Aurillac.” He nods at Gabriel and Garcia, who look taken aback but pleased with their father’s praise. “It certainly seems as if this is a supernatural threat, one that we would have license to deal with, but even we cannot arrantly storm Father Hubbard’s hive without proof that he is in fact harboring the beast. I am, of course, French, and with the city such as it is, a foreigner storming in to overthrow an English vampire and his English subjects would be regarded most unfavorably. It could spill over into human politics, if Hubbard brings his grievances to the Queen, and that we are sworn to avoid.”

“So?” Gabriel says. “Surely you cannot mean to do nothing, Papa.”

“Of course not.” Asher inclines his head. “But unlike you and your brother, I am accustomed to thinking before I act.”

Gabriel and Garcia open their mouths, discover that they cannot come up with a good rebuttal, and shut them. At that, Lucy wonders if Elizabeth knows the truth about the secret societies of creatures that live in her city, beneath her nose. When Flynn and Lucy met her at Whitehall, she seemed to be under the impression that they would have children in the normal way, and Kit was threatening to grass on Lucy, but it wasn’t clear if that was about being a witch or about associating with Lady Beaton, devoted servant of the executed Mary Stuart. Lady Beaton is of course here tonight, in all the proof that Kit needs that they are in fact associating, and if Flynn works as a spy for Elizabeth, surely she has to know about his extraordinary abilities. If Hubbard does go to her with a complaint about Frenchmen invading his home territory, does he need to specify that they were vampires, or would it be enough of an insult on its own? Elizabeth definitely can’t be seen tolerating witchcraft, though it’s true that her reputation as a heretical Jezebel, daughter of Anne Boleyn who was herself suspected of sorcery, can’t get much worse in Continental Catholic circles. Still, even to get one over on the Pope, she will not be painted as a patroness of the unnatural, offering sanctuary to monsters that prey upon her people, in the very way that Gabriel has accused Hubbard of doing. If anything, she will be inclined to punish them more strictly. She likes Flynn, but she’s made it clear he is on thin ice. Asher’s right, they need to be very careful.

“Forgive me if this is a foolish question,” Lucy says. “But does Her Majesty know what… what we are, exactly?”

Lady Beaton looks set to spit, her usual reaction to any mention of Elizabeth, but holds it in for the sake of etiquette. Somewhat surprisingly, it is Marlowe who answers. “She has some idea of us, that we are different from other folk, but has never asked directly, nor would any of us be unwise enough to say it. If he felt himself wronged, Hubbard could accuse us outright and deny all of it himself, so as to see us burned.”

Lucy wants to point out that Marlowe himself and Gabriel just contributed strongly to Hubbard feeling very wronged indeed, but the prospect seems to entertain Kit more than alarm him. Maybe he has a bit of an addiction to danger, and he’s hot-headed enough that he might welcome a chance to take out Hubbard and his cronies first. It sounds as if the policy is Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which makes sense since that is also Elizabeth’s approach to religion, but doesn’t make them safer. Besides, they are all in danger even without any supernatural associations or magical transgressions. Lady Beaton and Guy Fawkes are outright associates of Elizabeth’s political enemies, and the de Clermonts are French Catholics. Gabriel and Kit are sleeping together, and Agnes is a few months away from being accused of trying to murder King James and his new wife by satanic means. They are as implicitly treasonous and illegal as it is possible to get without stamping a literal scarlet letter on them.

There is a long pause as everyone racks their brains for what on God’s earth they should do next. They can’t go to the Queen’s Bench and apply for a warrant to search Hubbard’s property, and if he _is_ hiding a possibly time-traveling hellbeast, they can’t just sit back and let him do that. Then Lucy says, “I asked Mistress Sampson and Lady Beaton if they were willing to help with that other project. Should we do it now?”

“Amelie Wallis? Ye said she was from Essex?” Agnes asks. “ ‘Twould be easier to speak with her if we were ourselves in Essex. Your husband’s family owns a manor there, do they not?”

“We do,” Gabriel says. “The New Lodge. I have been there recently, though if it may be of service, it is at my sister’s disposal. Shall I accompany them?”

“I will go,” Asher says unexpectedly. “It is my house, and I wish to learn more of what is unfolding. Gabriel, you will stay here with your brother, and the two of you put an end to this foolish quarrel you insist upon maintaining. I will accompany my daughter-in-law and the two witches to Essex, and return them in time for this audience with Dr. Dee, three days hence.”

It is clear that once Asher has given his pronouncement on the matter, no one, not even those who are not his sons and not his species, is going to disagree. It is therefore settled that Lucy, Agnes, and Lady Beaton will travel with him to Essex tomorrow morning – it’s a half-hour train ride from London in the modern era, and not much longer than that for a vampire to run, but the witches must endure a slow, bumping carriage ride of over thirty miles – and Gabriel and Garcia will try to sort out this Hubbard situation, and themselves, in the meantime. They are under strict parental orders to quit being dillweeds, apparently, which is rather optimistic on Asher’s part, and Lucy hopes it will be good for them. Nonetheless, as the creatures are departing for the night, Gabriel makes his way over to Kit and ostentatiously links his arm with the daemon’s. “Come along, darling,” he says. “Let us find ourselves a bed.”

Marlowe glances at him, briefly at Flynn, and seems about to say something, then shrugs and evidently decides that fine, he can get exactly what he’s getting out of this arrangement and let Flynn continue to stew. They leave together, and Flynn evil-eyeballs their backs. Once he and Lucy have gone upstairs to their own room, he grumbles, “I swear they’re both just trying to make me mad now. Though in Clerkenwell, I – ”

“What?” Lucy says. “What did you do, exactly?”

Flynn squirms. “I said something to Kit that I – that I regret, and now I suppose I can’t be too surprised that he’s cramming it down my throat. I thought he was just as mad at Gabriel, but if he’s contrived a reconciliation by these cozy little monster hunts in London – ”

“I suspect,” Lucy says patiently, “that Gabriel wants to retaliate by demonstrating that he can do things with other people apart from you, if you seem so set on doing them without him. Your father’s right, you need to sort this out.”

Flynn starts to say something, stops, and sighs heavily. They undress and change for bed, climbing in together, and he gathers her in his arms. They cuddle for a few moments, then his hand slides along her calf and up to her thigh in a suggestive sort of fashion, and Lucy looks at him in amused surprise. “What? Again?”

“I just thought – ” Flynn is definitely blushing. His ears glow brilliantly, at least, and he coughs and harrumphs rather more than strictly necessary. “If you don’t want – ”

Lucy cuts that off by kissing him, rolling on top of him, and getting a hand between them to deal with the nightclothes. It is once again plain that Flynn is holding himself back and paying strict attention to everything he is doing and to what degree, but before long he is hard and solidly inside her and their hips roll together, as Lucy grabs his wrists in each hand and pushes them over his head. They kiss and muse and kiss again, roll over in the sheets, and he ends up on top, as Lucy links her legs around the back of his straining thighs. She can tell by the increasing blackness in his eyes that he’s losing a bit more control than he did last time, the rhythm of his thrusts pushing her deep into the mattress, and the faint white glow starts to spark, after being absent the first time. She suspects it’s linked to how much Flynn is letting himself go and giving over to the moment, and it provides an unusual, thrilling jolt of pleasure unlike anything she has ever experienced with a lover. She wants to ask him to bite her while he’s fucking her, since she has wondered what that would be like from day one, but it’s clear that that is still beyond what he would feel safe with. Instead, she just pulls his head down to bury between her breasts, as he lavishes them with kisses and she moans. Now that they have actually started doing this, she is indeed going to find it hard to stop.

They once more reach their release in relatively close time, as Flynn holds her down and she arches up into him, spasms of hazy-bright pleasure pulsing through Lucy’s entire body. They lie there together, as she runs a hand up the strong line of his spine and he belatedly realizes that he might be squashing her, flipping them over so she can curl up on his chest. He blinks, some of the blackness receding from his eyes, and looks up at her worriedly. “Was that – ”

“Mmm. Fine. More than fine.” Lucy bends down to kiss him, slow and lingeringly, and they nuzzle together, riding out the last waves of orgasm until she rolls off him. “You’re going to spoil me,” she teases. “Twice in what, three days?”

“Eh, well,” Flynn says gruffly. “Owed it to you, didn’t I?”

“As long as you’re not just – ” Lucy catches herself. She knows he wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t want to (that at least is extenuatingly clear) and she doesn’t mind having something to tide her over for her trip to Essex. Being away from him even for a day or two will be odd. They certainly haven’t spent every waking moment together, as he has been off with Raleigh and the School of Night and wherever else, and she has been having lessons with Lady Beaton and invitations to court with Elizabeth and trying to run the household. But even during the awkward, frigid first week here, they were spending the night together, and she’s gotten used to sleeping in his arms, the communion they share in the dark. She is somewhat more confident in her ability to manage this time period on her own, Asher will be there to supervise, and it’s not that far away, but nonetheless, she doesn’t like being without him for long. It feels as if something bad could happen when they’re apart.

Lucy puts that out of her head, reminds herself that she’ll be back in London by the end of the week to visit Dr. Dee (finally), and she is going to focus on the question of Amelie Wallis first. She leans up for another kiss, then curls against Flynn and goes to sleep.

Lucy, Agnes, and Lady Beaton leave for Essex the next morning. To be polite, Asher travels with them rather than just running there, and they must also accommodate Lady Beaton’s attendant, Janet Macdonald, and Meg. Lucy is leery about having Meg near anything else witchy, but since they will be staying at least one night in the New Lodge, propriety dictates that she bring her maid along. There will be a household there, of course, but it’s been serving as Gabriel’s bachelor pad and therefore has the same lack of female staff that panicked everyone when they first arrived in London. Combined with the luggage – nobody can travel lightly in this time period, especially not two wealthy women – the carriage is packed, and since it’s lined with furs and blankets for insulation, it quickly gets very hot in the sun. Meg, Lucy, and Agnes are crammed on one of the hard velvet-covered benches, and Janet, Lady Beaton, and Asher are crammed on the other, knocking into each other like dominoes every time the coachman takes a turn too hard. It is not nearly as light and fleet as the stagecoaches of later eras, and handles like a wheeled house. To say the least, Lucy is relieved when a sweaty four hours later, they roll and clop up the long drive of the de Clermonts’ country house, the footman opens the door, and Asher disembarks first to hand the ladies down, starting with Lucy. “Welcome to the New Lodge,” he says. “As my son’s wife, you will come second to no one save myself.”

“Ah – thank you, my lord,” Lucy says, trying not to gulp too many breaths of the fresh air all at once. Even one whiff has told her why anyone who can afford to do it keeps a manor away from the crowds, disease, and reek of London. The air does not smell like shit, river murk, smoke, and mud for the first time in she can’t remember when, and the New Lodge is built in modern stone, not the quintessential half-timbered Tudor fashion that is already considered rather quaint and dated. It is set among a vast, attractively landscaped garden and grounds, with plenty of room for vampires to run, and the servants file out of the house to make their courtesies to Asher and collect the luggage. At the sight of Lucy, they all bow or curtsy, and feeling awkward again, she nods at them.

“I understand you may wish to change and have something to drink after the journey,” Asher says. “But after that, will you join me in the garden?”

As with most things Asher de Clermont does, it isn’t a question so much as a statement of a future circumstance that he expects to be promptly fulfilled, however graciously. Lucy nods, and allows Meg to lead her inside and settle her in the lady of the house’s bedchamber, which must belong to Maria whenever she’s here. As the maid is changing her from her heavy traveling gown to something lighter and more stylish, suitable for genteel parley among the hedgerows, Lucy blurts out, “Meg, are you – are you all right? With – us?”

Meg gives her a startled look, clearly not having expected Lucy to consider her opinion on anything. After a pause, she firms her chin and nods. “I – I think I am, my lady. I can’t say I understand everything it is you’re doing, and God’s truth, I don’t think I want to. But I believe you’re good folk, and you did hire me for my discretion. So long as you’re Christian people that keep the queen’s peace, I’ll say naught a word to anyone.”

“Thank you,” Lucy says fervently, even as she thinks of Guy Fawkes sitting in her solar last night and how that would very definitely not count as it. But she’s certainly not going to say that aloud, and waits as Meg fixes her hair and fetches her a cup of cool water. They can actually drink it here, since it doesn’t come from the polluted Thames and the de Clermonts keep no livestock on their estate (nor have any privies to empty). Once she feels somewhat restored, and has performed her hostess duty by ensuring that Lady Beaton and Agnes have been given quarters and invited to dinner, Lucy makes her way downstairs. The place bears clear hallmarks of having recently been inhabited by Gabriel, no matter how hard the staff hastily tried to tidy it up, and it reminds her of Flynn’s house in Woodstock. Tapestries, diamonded windows, carved furniture, candelabras, plastered walls, ceilings high (likely in deference to all the tall men in the family) and arched. Lucy knows the logistical reasons that demanded they live in London, but she can’t help but wish this could be their base instead. It’s cleaner, much quieter (the constant city racket is another thing that has abruptly vanished) and just seems like she has more room to breathe. Maybe that’s why they like it.

She finds Asher in the garden, contemplating a bed of yellow tulips. This, more than any of the handsome and elegant furnishings of the house or its surroundings, displays the de Clermonts’ wealth. While tulip bulbs have not yet become more valuable than gold, a wildly expensive luxury item that results in the “tulip mania” of the 1620s and 1630s, they are new, rare, and costly, imported from the Netherlands, which has just begun to cultivate them and will soon be the wealthiest nation in the world. England and Spain are fighting over possession of the Low Countries as a result, and it is still considered a Spanish colony; Guy Fawkes will go over next year to take part in that war, as Lucy recalls. But Asher glances up at her approach and rises courteously. Like his sons, he is comfortably over six feet tall, and she has to tilt her head back to look at him. In more ways than one, he casts a long shadow.

“Walk with me,” Asher says, offering her his arm, and Lucy shyly takes it. This is the first time she has been alone with the de Clermont patriarch, and since her principal memory of their last interaction is of him informing her that her assistance was not needed and shutting the door in her face, she’s unsure what to expect. They stroll among the blooming, buzzing flowerbeds, the sculpted topiary and the shadowy trellises climbed with verdant vines. For several minutes, neither of them say anything. Then Asher remarks, “You are not truly married to my son, are you?”

Lucy stops short, forcing him to do the same, suddenly panicked that he’s brought her here to unmask her as an impostor and do away with her in secret. Not that she really thinks Garcia’s father would do that to him, but if Asher has also mistrusted her just as much and craftily bided his time, rather than showing his hand up front like Gabriel –

“I do not mean to alarm you,” Asher goes on, seeing by her face that he has done exactly that. “But among the things you both have not said to me, I think that was one. No one could doubt that my son loves you, and you him. I have seen how the pair of you look at each other, especially when you believe the other is not. But nonetheless, something about your relationship does not seem entirely like that of man and wife to me, even accounting for the standards of a different time of which I know nothing. Am I wrong, my lady?”

“I…” Lucy should have guessed he knew more about them than he was going to say. “No, we haven’t actually been… been married in any sort of formal way. We agreed it would be the best pretense to explain my presence, but it caused nearly as many problems as it solved.”

“Mmm.” Asher takes that in inscrutably. She doesn’t think he’s going to give her a lecture on living together out of wedlock, as that doesn’t seem like him, and even if he’s Catholic now and has been for many centuries, he was born in the hedonistic Hellenism of ancient Greece and by the sound of Flynn’s stories, took full advantage of that fact. “It certainly troubled Gabriel greatly to think that Garcia would have run off and married a woman he knew nothing of, with no word to him before and no satisfactory explanation after. I hope for his part that Garcia will make that clear, but he has rarely been gifted with eloquence of speech.”

If this is a polite way to say “can’t use his words,” Lucy would tend to agree. She also thinks that Asher might be asking too much for his disaster middle child to explain anything to his eldest without being physically forced, but maybe the lack of intermediaries or outside witnesses will force Gabriel and Garcia to hash it out one way or another. She glances up at Asher, motionless and magnificent in the sunlight, and how it dazzles his eyes like the fire of an opal, a thousand different colors at once. It occurs to her poignantly how this man is so much for his family, a towering giant and pillar of the temple, that all three of his sons have been trying so hard to fill the void he left, and even their combined efforts cannot quite do the job. Gabriel has tried to be head of the family and successful man of the world; Garcia has sought with his brilliance and his intellect to solve the mystery of creature origins and restore the broken family; Wyatt has struggled with the crushing burden of being grandmaster when nobody expected it or planned to prepare him. No wonder Asher’s death in 1944, after the gruesome tragedy of Matej and Christian in 1762, has destroyed them so comprehensively. Lucy could understand that a little before meeting him, but now having done so, does far more, and would give anything to take that knowledge back. It’s too much. Too much.

As if reading her mind, Asher glances up. A small, sad smile curls his mouth. Not asking for information, per se, but as a simple statement of fact, he says, “You know how I die.”

“I…” Lucy isn’t sure if she can bear to tell him, or if he has the right to know if he asks, and she prays that he doesn’t. It must have been hanging in the air as she looks at him, and on that accord, she can’t lie. “Yes. I do.”

“I thought as much.” Asher glances at her hand, the de Clermont ring that she wears. “I gave that to my wife, and I knew she would not have given it to you otherwise. I understood soon after meeting this Garcia that I must not be alive wherever, _whenever_ he has come from, and as you said that it is after the year 1912, I can take solace in the fact that there is still time. But it is not only me. There is something else. I do not know who it concerns, or when, but I am not the only one my family has lost.”

“No.” Lucy looks at the garden path and the blooming beds, the dappled green-gold shadows and the warm, pleasant day, the blue sky and the rustling old-growth oaks. It seems difficult to imagine, standing here with the very living (well, relatively speaking) man next to her, the horrors that are going to befall him and all of them. “No, you aren’t.”

Asher’s mouth tightens. It is clear that the thought of dying himself is odd and troubling, but not nearly so much as the fact that it will leave his family in ruins, and that Flynn and Lucy surely would not have risked the dangerous trip back here if there was any chance of doing it another way. “It cannot be Garcia,” he says. “Because he came with you. It could be Gabriel, since Garcia seems to so little remember how they were. Or perhaps – no. I must leave off speculation. It is not for you to have to tell me, nor do I want to know.”

“But I should,” Lucy says, thinking of Flynn’s desperation the other night, and how deeply even she feels the wound, the idea of having to step back and let this tragedy play out again, even knowing it cannot truly, fundamentally be changed. “I should – I wish – I want to tell you, I want to stop it. Even if I never meet Garcia, it – it feels as if I should be willing to make that sacrifice, if it meant your family was restored.”

“You are a kind soul.” Asher smiles halfway, though his eyes remain unfathomably distant. “And it is a deeply generous offer, since as I said, I can well see how much you love my son, and how little it would suit you to be parted from him. But you – where you come from, Lucy, what has happened to us is history. The past. A terrible thing, to be sure, though we are not the only ones to have suffered unfairly in this world. Rather, it is the reverse. We have had far more money, life, love, happiness, success, and any other blessing that you care to name, and the future of everything should not be sacrificed to buy us a few scraps more. You are the future, Lucy, you and this connection to Ashmole 782, all the creatures who must be set free from this bondage in which they have been placed. I could not in good conscience call myself the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus, or claim that I had upheld the philosophy in which it had been founded, to prize my own life above that mission.”

Lucy looks at him. She is staggered at the fact that even now, Asher is thinking ahead hundreds and hundreds of years to a time that is not his, to creatures he will never meet, and insisting that Lucy carry on, if it means saving them from Cahill and Temple and the Congregation’s archaic rules and shackles of fear. When Flynn told her about Asher at Woodstock, how he submitted to horrific torture and death rather than turn Hitler into a vampire and give the Nazis ultimate victory, he was emphatic that his father was a hero, and frankly, Lucy isn’t sure that is enough of a word for it. “Garcia misses you,” she says at last, in a whisper. “They all do. So very much.”

“I cannot imagine.” Asher’s voice catches, only the barest bit, and his eyes sparkle a little too much. “Nor, of course, do I wish to die and leave them bereft. After all these centuries, one grows accustomed to the fact of permanence, that all else fades and yet you do not. I cannot wrap my mind around the idea. Perhaps I will go later to pray, and ask that I be reminded.”

Lucy’s heart aches. She doesn’t know if it’s better that he is taking this with calm resignation, though she doesn’t think it would have been in his nature to kick and fuss and throw a tantrum and demand that all of history be reshaped around the objective of his survival. For all their faults and flaws, the de Clermonts love each other more than anything in the world, and it’s clear that Asher will not allow himself to be saved if it means putting their future fortunes in jeopardy. The one thing holding him back, however, is the identity of the other person they lose, and Lucy cannot stand to tell him that it is his grandson, that Christian, the one who deserves it the least, is also going to be taken away from them. Asher might not lift a finger to save himself, but Christian –

They stand there in the bright sun, as Asher silently composes himself. “Thank you for this,” he says at length. “It cannot have been easy for you to serve as such a fateful messenger. Can you tell me anything else more heartening?”

“I… yes.” Lucy hopes that Flynn won’t mind, but she doesn’t think so. “You’ll have a granddaughter. You’ll get to meet her, and know her a little bit. She’s turned in 1888, and you – well, it happens after. She’s Garcia’s daughter, and she’s – she’s lovely. Her name is Jiya, and she’s a scientist, she’s very accomplished.”

“A granddaughter?” Asher smiles. “That is good to hear. There are, dare I say, not enough women in this family, only Maria and Cecilia – and now you, I suppose, temporarily – to our credit. I shall look forward to meeting her. Very well, I have asked enough of the sibyl from you, my lady. I have the letter to my wife to finish, and I will leave you to your work.”

With that, he bows, kisses her hand, and strides away across the garden, as Lucy wonders if he is going to share any of this earth-shattering news with Maria. Flynn told her that his parents had no secrets, that they never loved anyone as they did each other, but surely Maria cannot take complacently to hearing any of this. Her reaction after Asher’s murder certainly proved that, and Lucy wonders with another ache if Asher will quietly keep this to himself, another of the secrets he does not share with his family. It seems impossible that one man, even a peerless immortal, could bear all these burdens, but he does.

Lucy has something to eat, then spends the afternoon in lessons with Lady Beaton. They have much more space to work here, and less worry about burning something down, and they return to their efforts to conjure a familiar for Lucy, that magical creature that would serve as shield and guardian, and could travel in search of information. Lucy can manage a midair fireball that hovers around her in a rather aimless fashion, and it sometimes bobs over to get in the way when Lady Beaton tries to attack her, but it’s still not exactly a smashing success. She recalls that the common stereotype for a witch’s familiar is a cat, but this is definitely cooler. At least if it would work.

They go inside around five o’clock, wash and prepare for supper, and the three witches eat alone. Asher is in his chamber, having no need to take human food, and the maids eat with the other servants. When the meal is done and cleared, Agnes gets to her feet. “Very well. Time to see if we can summon this Amelie Wallis, aye?”

Lucy and Lady Beaton follow Agnes into the solar, shut the door, and begin preparing for the ritual. Lucy wonders, given all this inadvertent influencing of Shakespeare they are doing, if this is where he gets the idea of the three witches. It’s not really a stretch – King James writes _Daemonologie_ in 1597, heavily based on the Berwick witch trials of which Agnes is the prime culprit, and that’s commonly cited as one of Shakespeare’s sources for _Macbeth._ The idea of the three weird sisters goes back to the Greek Fates, and Lucy, Lady Beaton, and Agnes could be Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Lucy’s not a virgin, of course, but as a technically unmarried young woman without children, she fulfills that end of the spectrum. She and Lady Beaton follow Agnes’ instructions, lighting candles and drawing a circle; since Amelie Wallis is a timewalker, they clearly need to give her something to aim for. Lucy has never seen anyone else do it apart from herself, and her heart beats fast and short. What if something goes wrong? Everything has rested on the idea that they can contact her ancestress, ask about her connection to Ashmole 782 and how she might have passed that on to Lucy, and if they can’t get those answers, this will be even more difficult. Agnes knows what she’s doing, right? They’re not going to summon someone – some _thing –_ else they might far less like to talk to? It’s not dumb kids playing with a Ouija board, but still.

Agnes inquires if they have the blood of a black cockerel, seems mildly disappointed that they don’t, and announces that they will make do. Once the ritual has been set up, and Lucy is feeling very _Sabrina The Teenage Witch_ about it all, the three women step back and take hands. Agnes starts to chant, Lucy hopes Meg is not going to allow this to sway her decision not to turn them in, and the candles gutter, although there is no breeze and all the windows are closed. For a long moment, nothing. Silence, darkness, emptiness. The circle remains deserted, and Lucy feels increasingly ridiculous. Did they actually think this was going to –

And then, far off and then louder, she hears a rushing sound, like a train or a tidal wave speeding directly toward them. She fights the urge to dive out of the way, and to close her eyes. A doorway in the air takes shape in the middle of the circle, only sketches at first and then more solidly, and it swings open. A young woman in a dark dress, cloak, white cap and collar steps through, where an instant before there was no one, and says, “Hail, my sisters.”

Her voice makes all of them jump, especially Lucy, as she stares at the newcomer and realizes that she knows her, she has seen her before, albeit some years older. It is the woman in the witchwoods, the woman who helped her convince the tree not to eat Flynn, Gabriel, and Jiya that night at Denise and Michelle’s, when she timewalked for the very first time. She said to Flynn then that she thought it was Amelie, but this evidently confirms it. That makes sense, since Amelie was the first owner of that property along with her husband Jebediah, when they moved to the New World in 1650 and settled in the wilds of New Amsterdam, as it was still known at the time. It wasn’t renamed New York in honor of the future James II until 1664. This is a younger Amelie, an Amelie who perhaps has not yet fallen foul of Matthew Hopkins, the infamous Witchfinder General. Does she know yet? Is this what tells her?

“Mistress Wallis,” Agnes says, since it is incumbent upon someone to actually start the conversation. “Good e’en.”

Amelie frowns. “Mistress Wallis? Are you mistaken? My name is Prestyn, Amelie Prestyn. I have as yet no husband.”

Lucy’s jaw drops. Of course, _Wallis_ must be Amelie’s married name, but while this could theoretically be another Preston family, they are an old and illustrious witch lineage, and the odds are low. Flynn told her that Amelie was also an ancestress on her mother’s side, that one of her great-great-granddaughters married an Arthur Preston, but Lucy didn’t realize that Amelie was originally one of them to start with. They stare at each other; this Amelie has not yet seen her in the woods, does not know her, but seems to recognize something intrinsically about her nonetheless. Amelie says, “Are you the one who called me here?”

“More – more or less.” Lucy swallows, trying to wet her dry throat. “What – what year have you come from, exactly?”

“I left the evening of Wednesday, June the eighth, 1642.” Amelie cocks her head, as if trying to judge what that means to them. “The king and parliament are at war. If you mean to interrogate me for that intelligence, I have none to offer.”

“No, it’s not that.” Yes, Lucy thinks, the English Civil War has just started, and will drag on until after Amelie has left the country, culminating in 1649 with the execution of Charles I and Cromwell’s establishment of the Commonwealth, which lasts eleven years until the Restoration in 1660. Amelie was born in 1622, so she’s only about twenty, not yet married, and not yet accused by Hopkins. Nor has she met Bathsheba and Abiah Foulger, the witches she trains in the 1680s as her successors, and who were also named in the Ashmole fragment. “I wanted to ask if you knew anything about an alchemical manuscript possibly written by Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer. I’m not sure what it would be called in your time, but it’s known to us as Ashmole 782.”

Amelie looks blank. “I have no truck with alchemy. Are you sure it is me you mean?”

“Yes.” Lucy thinks that they might have called Amelie up too early in her life, and need to fetch her at a later date, but if so, they will need to walk her across space as well as time. They obviously cannot hop on a ship and sail to the New World and the future site of Denise and Michelle’s house, and if they are in Essex, the only version of Amelie they can get directly is her younger self. They are talking to her, which is a solid start, but she is barely more than a teenager right now and certainly not involved in any grand plots. Still, since Lucy does not want to go away from here with nothing, she persists, “Is there anything you can think of? You and I – we’re from the same family, we’re both Prestons. My name is Lucy, Lucy Preston. You’re a many-times-great grandmother of mine.”

Amelie looks startled. “How is that possible? I walked back in time, not forward.”

“You did, but I have also come to this time from another. This is Tuesday, June the second, in the year 1590. Do you know anything about – ” Lucy thinks of Asher saying that Ashmole 782 was made from something vampire, witch, and daemon at once, and all the talk of David Rittenhouse possibly being some kind of dangerous hybrid, a crossbreed of all the species with an unprecedented combination of their powers. “About…” She hates the word, but it’s the one Amelie is most likely to know it by. “About creature half-breeds?”

“What – ” At that, Amelie looks truly startled, and almost afraid, as if Lucy might be some kind of supernatural Ku Klux Klan, here to hang her on a tree for fraternizing outside her race. “What do you know about my – my grandparents?”

“What?” It’s Lucy’s turn to be even more surprised. “Your grandparents?”

Amelie eyes them up and down, as if judging if they are to be trusted with this information. At last she says, “My grandmother was a witch. My grandfather, Richard de Prestyn, was a vampire. My father, Henry, was their son.”

“What?” Lucy should think of something else to say, but she’s too gobsmacked. “Their – their _son_ son?”

“Yes,” Amelie says, as if unsure why this was not clear. “My mother, as perhaps you know, is a witch in the accustomed way, but her father, my other grandfather, claimed to be part daemon. Is that what you were meaning to ask me?”

Lucy isn’t sure, because her mouth is still hanging open. The Prestons have always been so proud of their pure witch lineage – but if what Amelie is saying is true, that the original possessor of the name was a vampire, that turns everything on its head. Apparently Amelie’s father was also a Henry, perhaps who Lucy’s own father was named after, and Amelie herself must be exactly what they’ve been talking about, a creature who is descended biologically from vampires, witches, and daemons. That means, in whatever small part, Lucy is too. As far as she knows, her family tree is witches all the way back, and Flynn mentioned that he’s been searching for reliable data on cross-breeds and heard legends of their existence, but was never able to confirm anything as actual fact. Lucy and Amelie continue to look at each other, until Amelie says again, “That _was_ what you wanted?”

“It might be, I don’t – I don’t know.” Lucy feels the sore need for a pen and paper to scribble this down. “Your grandparents – your grandmother was a witch, and she – what was her name? Where was she from? When did they meet?”

Amelie looks blindsided by this barrage of questions. At last she says, “My grandmother was born in Innsbruck, the capital of the county of Tyrol and the residence of the emperor Maximilien. She fell afoul of Heinrich Kramer’s witch hunts in the city, and was sentenced to be hanged. Another witch rescued her and saw to it that she was able to escape. She fled to England and there met my grandfather. Her name was Anneke Proktor.”

“Heinrich Kramer? Author of the _Malleus Maleficarum?”_ Lucy does some quick mathematical gymnastics in her head. “He was in Innsbruck in 1485. How could your grandmother possibly – ”

“The offspring of vampires and witches live a long time,” Amelie says. “My father was over a hundred years old when he died – was killed – and looked not much more than thirty.”

“Jesus.” Lucy is feeling a strong need to sit down, when another lightning bolt hits her. “Wait, did you say Anneke _Proktor?”_

“Yes.” Amelie frowns. “Do you know that name?”

Lucy doesn’t answer, because she is once more slightly faint. Son of a _bitch._ She has a feeling that she knows exactly which witch rescued Anneke, because if this is true, she would be a common ancestress to them both. Jessica can be firmly located in 1484, and Anneke was sentenced to die in 1485. Whether or not Jessica’s presence changed things from how they originally happened, she must have caught wind of what was going on in Innsbruck, realized that it was her great-whatever grandmother and she had to be saved if Jessica herself wanted to be born, and gone to rescue her. As a result, Anneke went to England, met Richard de Prestyn, and started Lucy’s own family line – which means that Jessica is the reason they all exist. If Lucy hadn’t sent her to the fifteenth century when she did, would they have – what? Winked out of the world like snuffed candles? Been themselves, but different? Never been born at all? Gotten Anneke saved differently? The whole point has been is that history is hard to change, that things find a way to happen anyway, but Jesus. Jesus _Christ._

This means that Jessica is related to Amelie too, Lucy thinks. Which isn’t surprising, there are only a limited number of old witch families and the Proctors and Prestons and Wallaces all have various points of entanglement and intermarriage, but it does mean that this lineage is special, that it is clustered together ever more tightly around them. She has a thousand more questions, but it occurs to her that Amelie just said her father was murdered. He was half-vampire, half-witch, married to a witch with daemon ancestry who he certainly must have fed on. Is it possible that Henry de Prestyn _himself_ was made into Ashmole 782? Asher said its vellum was made from creature skin, that it was a cruel book. Does Amelie have a connection to this manuscript because it is literally fashioned out of her own father?

Lucy doesn’t think Amelie knows that, and she doesn’t want to broach such a gruesome hypothesis without more concrete assurances that she’s in the ballpark. Her mind is spinning, and she has been given more than enough to cogitate on, so she glances at Agnes. “Should we send her home for now?”

Agnes pauses, then nods. Amelie steps through the door in the air, shutting it behind her and vanishing, and Agnes speaks another incantation to seal it closed and end the timewalk. Lucy staggers backwards and collapses on a settee. She feels as if she has been clubbed repeatedly by a blunt object, and Agnes and Lady Beaton both glance at her sidelong. At last Agnes says, “That what ye meant to ken, eh?”

“I’m not sure.” Lucy wishes more than anything that Flynn was here, and it feels as if even tomorrow is too long to wait to get back and tell him. “We might need to call her again, at a later stage in her life, and see if she’s learned anything else. That will be harder, since she emigrates to the New World in 1646. But she – before I left my time, I sent another witch, Jessica Proctor, to the 1480s. Anneke Proktor must be our great-something grandmother, and unless she and Richard de Prestyn had more children apart from Henry, it must be via Amelie and her descendants. Jessica might be my cousin however many times removed, or – ”

“Ye sent another witch?” Agnes asks. “Where?”

“To Italy, originally, but it looks like she does some traveling.” Lucy is still deeply rattled. “She’s at King Matthias Corvinus’ court in Hungary around 1484, and now we can locate her again in Innsbruck in 1485, rescuing her ancestress who was imprisoned for witchcraft. Innsbruck is in Austria in my day, it wouldn’t be hard for her to hear what was going on there, especially at a place as well connected as Corvinus’ court. But if Anneke Proktor had a son with a vampire, and that’s the reason my family of witches has the name – ”

“Take a breath, eh? Ye’re rabbitin’ on and on.” Agnes pats her on the shoulder. “What is it you think, then?”

“I think Ashmole 782 is Henry de Prestyn,” Lucy says. “I think it’s my great-however-many grandfather. Someone killed him, and made him into a book. Whether they wanted his power, or they wanted something else with it, I don’t know.”

“Canna be,” Lady Beaton says, with admirable pragmatism. “She said it was her father, and the lass was born in what, 1622? He couldna have died before at least 1621, at the earliest.”

This does catch Lucy briefly short, but given what they are dealing with, the potential answer is clear. “He was a timewalker too. Amelie is one, obviously, so if she inherited it from him, and he was killed on one of his trips into the past – she might not know when it was, not yet, but maybe she learns later. It would have to be – ” She stops. “Maybe some time right around now. Last year, or this year, even.”

Agnes and Lady Beaton exchange a look. It’s not clear whether this occurred to them or not, but they don’t disprove it. “If he was murdered, then, by someone, perhaps in this verra year,” Agnes says, after a very long pause. “Who?”

* * *

Gabriel de Clermont can think of a thousand better occupations for the evening, nearly all of which involve wine, good cheer, lutes and viols and harpsichord, and someone of a beautiful and willing disposition. Most recently that would be Kit, though it’s not clear if “willing” describes him so much as wanting sorely to get one over on Garcia, an emotion with which Gabriel can wholly sympathize. He does not need to beg for bedmates and might not have abased himself for Marlowe, but every time he attempts to consider the situation logically, his brain disconnects and an hour later he discovers himself having done something else to heap fuel upon the fire. Besides, it is more profitable to keep Kit friendly, or at least not actively malicious, and Gabriel does enjoy their liaisons. Poets are remarkably imaginative in bed, it turns out. Mary has also been wanting him to call again, but it’s best to keep some space betwixt himself and the Pembroke household just the minute. He’ll return whenever this nonsense is sorted out. At this point, that may be the Judgment, but so bloody be it.

Instead, rather than any of that diversion and bacchanal, Gabriel is dressed in garb better befitting the coarser sort of workman, a black cloth wound about his head and neck like the captain of a Barbary corsair. Still more, he is at large in the dank, misty streets of London with his mouse-brained, pig-headed, weasel-hearted, lying-arsed blundering babbling nincompoop ninnyhammer blackguard of a brother, and his patience for the affair is limited. Christian, despite his eagerness to accompany his father and uncle upon this mission of condign vengeance, has been ordered to stay at home, and at least this cannot go poorly on his account. Gabriel reminds himself that this is not even Garcia, but whatever clumsy fetch has been sent as replacement. He owes him nothing of his time or attention or regard, not if Garcia seems so set on withholding it from him. But the alternative was to let the fool go to confront Father Hubbard’s hive alone, and Gabriel, to his unutterable perturbation, discovered that his desire to see Garcia suffer did not extend quite so far as that. This thundering tree-trunk tower of God Almighty’s most refined and rarefied stupidity will just have to shut his mouth and take Gabriel with him.

Conversation is minimal as the de Clermont brothers make their way through the streets. Since it’s less than three weeks until the summer solstice, they had to wait almost to midnight for it to be dark, and even now, a hint of blue light lingers in the western sky. Gabriel has to admit that despite this Garcia’s flaws in multiple and extensive departments, he moves well, and the two of them fall instinctively into watching each other’s weak sides. When they nearly run out in front of a city watchman (he could neither catch them nor stop them, but could make a lot of annoying hubbub, and Gabriel does not want to _have_ to eat him), Garcia throws out an arm and grabs Gabriel back, causing him to momentarily forget what he is doing. Good to know that this Garcia also bears resemblance to his own in the important aspect of being built like a brick outhouse, and equally, one remarks, full of shit.

Once the way has been cleared, the two of them continue. Hubbard’s hive is in Blackfriars, in the old buildings of the Dominican priory dissolved in 1538. Appropriate location for a man of God, especially one of Hubbard’s persecutorial tendencies. The Dominicans ran the Inquisition for hundreds of years, and despite their status as unacceptably _Catholic,_ Gabriel rather thinks the bastard would like to give it another try. It is always a difficult path to walk, being both a vampire and religious. Pelagius, the great opponent of St. Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century, concocted his heresy trying to account for it, insisting that even a supernatural creature shut off from God’s grace could earn salvation through strict and to-the-letter observance of every rule and precept of the Gospel, without a single slip. Gabriel, who has never met a rule that he did not break (often _very_ slippery, thanks very much) has long since shut that door on his literally immortal soul, and he clings to Catholicism because he likes the drama and pomp and ceremony of it, bells and smells. As far as the theology goes, he does not believe in God, exactly, but he doesn’t _not,_ and guilt is perpetual, but so is the thought that perhaps one day, he will in fact be forgiven. He is aware that penances are usually involved, or indulgences, both of which the Protestants have harangued about at great length. _Please_ , Martin Luther. Be quiet, do. (Ironically, the Calvinists hate Pelagius because he denied Original Sin, which the grim sanctimonious killjoys are very fond of clubbing everyone with. Gabriel generally finds the reformers far more obnoxious than the Catholic church, which lets you get away with anything so long as you pay for it, though he recognizes that he is not the intended audience.)

In another few minutes, they are on Hubbard’s territory itself, and have to be careful. Vampires can live as a family with the sire or dame who turned them, as the de Clermonts do, but not all sirings have been by their own will or by a parent who means the best for them. Some are loners, and some, such as these, live in hives, a pack of vampires in a common property. Some are Hubbard’s blood children, but others aren’t, and have traveled to London for refuge from wary and unwelcoming rural communities. There are advantages to banding together for survival, knowing that you will always have food or a hunting partner or protection from the authorities, but the tradeoffs are stiff. Hubbard runs his roost with an iron fist, demanding prayer and piety, asceticism and absolute allegiance, and Gabriel and Garcia have had several spectacular scuffles with him before. There was that particular one last year, and others. Gabriel wonders darkly if this Garcia remembers them at all, given as he seems to remember so little else. One should certainly hope.

“Hold on,” Gabriel whispers, as they turn the corner and size up the priory. Most of the Blackfriars hive are young enough that they can’t be out much, if at all, by day, and the hour of midnight chosen to conceal the brothers’ purpose from interfering warmbloods also means that they’ll have to deal with more frothing young zealots, eager to defend their father from dastardly Frenchies. “How many of the bloody ankle-biters, do you think?”

Garcia gives him half an amused look, but seems oddly hesitant to venture a guess. “You’ve been here more recently,” he says. “What do you think?”

Gabriel nearly comes back with a barb about how he wasn’t aware that Garcia trusted his word on anything, but the verbal warfare can wait until they return to the Old Lodge. “A dozen, maybe sixteen. No more than twenty, though.”

“Twenty?” Garcia looks displeased, but as the two of them have torn through entire human battalions, even twenty fervent young vampiric disciples will not pose much of a threat. “Fine. Let’s go.”

They break from cover and move smoothly across the courtyard, under the arches of the priory. If the hive is in the middle of services, of which Hubbard makes them attend several every night, they might have a chance to search the place undisturbed. At least until someone smells them. Gabriel doubts that they will get out of here without a kerfuffle, but he is in sore need of hitting someone (maybe he can punch Garcia in the middle of the brawl and make it look like an accident) and would not mind the recreation. He also doubts that Hubbard will be keeping this creature, this _Rittenhouse,_ under a bed or in a trunk, waiting to pop up like a painted puppet in a Cheapside booth. But they have to look.

They reach the door, Garcia fumbles with the lock and mutters a few fascinating obscenities, and they push it open. There is always an instinctual revulsion at entering another vampire’s territory uninvited, but they manfully overcome it, sneaking down the corridor as only two large supernatural warriors can do. Fortunately, they don’t make nearly as much noise as they would if they were mortal, and emerge into the large, dim solar. It looks as if they’re right, Hubbard’s minions are in church, being preached at about how their obligations to the Lord have in no way ended with their death. Another point in favor of Catholicism, Gabriel thinks. Go to confession, scandalize a priest, say a few decades of Hail Marys, problem solved. (If that is not how the system works, he does not want to hear about it.)

A quick sweep of the room does not produce any frightening hooded monsters, though Garcia does cut his hand on a silver blade and curse again. Gabriel’s head jerks up instantly at the scent of it, and he flashes over. “Are you – ” He reminds himself that he doesn’t care. “Blind enough to cut yourself on silver, now? Really, darling, must I do everything here?”

“I didn’t realize it was silver,” Garcia says resentfully, sucking on his finger to encourage it to heal. “Why is Hubbard keeping a silver blade on his desk, anyway?”

Gabriel frowns. Since Hubbard himself is vulnerable to it, the fact of keeping a dangerous weapon near at hand, buried in the books and papers and half-written sermons that Garcia searched too intemperately, _is_ noticeable. Perhaps he has progressed to more stringent standards of physical discipline with his hive, though assailing them with silver would certainly cross a line. If so, they could finally have solid grounds to take Hubbard down, though his children would doubtless dutifully protest that it was for their own good. God’s wounds, Gabriel hates this place, the air of fanaticism and danger, the still-shining cut on Garcia’s hand, the silence and the unsettling stillness. He glances over his shoulder. Should they have even come here tonight? He’s usually far better about sensing traps, and the comparative ease of their entrance, the lack of opponents –

“Should we sweep the dormitories?” he asks, trying to focus. “Your hand, darling, is it – ”

“It’s just a papercut,” Garcia says crossly. “And it’s not as if it was poisoned like – ”

He stops himself, but too late. Gabriel can sense something very strange about that, the way Garcia was trying not to meet his eyes as he said it, and the constant mystery about where this Garcia has come from and what he intends to do here, aside from serving as a constant source of aggravation to Gabriel and Marlowe personally. They stare at each other for a long, teetering moment. Then Gabriel repeats, “Not as if it was poisoned like what?”

“Never mind.” Garcia clearly does not want to discuss this. “Look, it’s fine, it was just a scratch. I’m more interested in what this means. If Hubbard is keeping a silver knife with his things, that means he thinks he might have to use it, and I doubt it was just in case we dropped by. So the – thing might be here, and he’s afraid of it too.”

“I did say that, my dearest, did I not? That it was here?” Gabriel is getting edgy. He stalks a circle around the room, glancing up into the dark vaults in search of something about to drop down on their necks, hangman’s noose or hidden harpy alike. “Do you have such a forfeiture of trust in my simplest word as that?” He tries to ask it casually, but it stings.

There is another pause. Then Garcia says, “You’ve not exactly been trustworthy, have you?”

“I have not been trustworthy?” Oh, God and the saints, that quite does it. Gabriel whirls around, snarling. _“I_ have not been trustworthy? I have only ever been precisely as I always am, whilst _you_ , my beloved, are the one who is not yourself, returned to London with a wife you still say so little about and some truth you will confide to Papa and not to me, some scurrilous ventures to send my son upon, and a whole cabal of creatures you have dragged in who I am supposed to repose my confidence upon? _I_ have not been trustworthy? Say that again, and we shall put that little silver pot-sticker of Hubbard’s to good use, won’t we?”

Garcia stares at him, taken aback by Gabriel’s vehemence. After a moment of thought that appears deeply painful (Christ, Gabriel hates this lummox, hates him until he doesn’t even hate him anymore, madly vexing how that is) he holds up his hands and tilts his head back, exposing his throat in surrender. “All right. All right, you’re – I know I’ve – I haven’t handled this well. I just…” He trails off. “I’ve been trying to save you.”

“Yes, so you say.” Gabriel is not mollified. He stalks across the dark solar until they are almost nose to nose, the tension shimmering between them. “Why – don’t – you – _explain?”_

“I told Papa, we came from…” Garcia visibly flounders. “Not now. And where that is, we – you and I, we – it’s been – it’s been very hard, and I don’t know what I can say to you or how much it will change. We’re just… not used to… this. The two of us. Doing anything.”

That, despite himself, hits Gabriel like a full artillery broadside. He cannot imagine any future where he and Garcia are estranged to a degree that this seems to suggest, and his first instinct is to lash out and call him a liar, but Garcia is possessed of a fierce, instinctive, clumsy honesty that is anathema to the idea, even if he does not always tell the whole truth. Gabriel can read it in his face, the bleakness of his eyes, the drawn lines of his mouth, the way he keeps looking up at Gabriel and then away, waiting to be torn down. No wonder Garcia has approached every interaction with him as if marching into battle. Something has happened, something Gabriel shudders to even think of, to make that his first and deeply conditioned instinct, and at that, something occurs to him. He does not know if he wants it to be the case or not, but it springs to his tongue. “Am _I_ the one who is poisoned?”

“You…” Garcia searches for help, does not find it. “You… yes.”

“Why am I not dead, then?” Gabriel’s heart skips a beat it does not need. _“Am_ I dead?”

“Not exactly. It’s… complicated.”

Gabriel is torn between a desperate desire to push for more, and the awareness that this is not the place or time have this conversation, and they need to get back to the search and get out before Hubbard takes exception. “Is this why you thought Christian would wish to help? If it was a matter of saving me?”

Garcia closes his eyes, clearly in pain. “Yes.”

Gabriel frowns at him. He can sense something there, something else, and it terrifies him so thoroughly that he can offer it no further voice and hope to all the gods that his momentary suspicion was mistaken. It has muted some of his anger, leaving a rich stew of uncertainty and confusion, and he is just about to resume the search when a voice says from the door, “Halt! What doest thou in this place?”

Bloody hell. It is one of Hubbard’s children, a pale-faced, straw-haired teenager perhaps only a few months into the gift, barely in command of his senses or anything except the need to feed, and he will attack at the slightest provocation. His eyes are black and wild, he can smell Garcia’s hand and it is making slaver drip from his fangs, and Gabriel instinctively moves between them. “Back down, pup,” he snarls, in the tone of a vampire who is many centuries old and can tear this upstart to shreds. “Now.”

“It is _thou,_ my lord de Clermont?” The fledgling leers at him, his deliberate use of “thou” rather than the “you” expected for a social superior and a much-senior creature clearly intended as an insult. “Father hast warned us about thee. The French sodomite and shameless fornicator, a Popish author of chaos and agent of the devil. Thou art not welcome here.”

Gabriel considers that for all its picturesque and unflattering nature, this is not in the main an inaccurate description of him. “I do not doubt Father Hubbard has filled thy head with terrible tales of my wicked nature,” he says, voice rough and dark and dangerously smooth. “Dost thou truly wish to see the worst of these? Or wilt thou tell me if there is a creature here, a beast, known perhaps as Rittenhouse?”

“I know no beast.” The fledgling licks his lips, black eyes focused on Garcia’s hand. “None except for thee in the flesh, and thy – ”

At that, he runs out of the limited brain power necessary to form words, and throws himself at them, which is truly, even on this night of stupid actions, one of the stupidest. He is supernaturally strong, but he is still a fledgling and a lightweight, and Gabriel backhands him into the rush-strewn floor with barely a flick. As the fledgling is snapping and trying to get up, Gabriel puts a boot on his shoulder and pins him down. “Touch my brother and I drain you dry. Is there a beast here? One of _thy_ brothers said so, when I tasted him the other night.”

“There is…” The fledgling stares up at him with glassy eyes. “There is something, I know not what, it… I do not meddle in Father’s business, I do not ask… it goes and comes at privy hours, and it…” He snarls, driven mad by the scent of blood, the overwhelming, desperate, raging need to drink it, his fangs digging into his bottom lip. Newborns can rarely hold their sense for more than a few hours between feeds. “Will you not have – have pity!”

Gabriel does not see why he should have pity on one of Hubbard’s spawn, but the puling creature has given them some sort of confirmation that as he says, _something_ is here. He bites his wrist and splashes a few drops into the mouth gaping like a baby bird’s, having sudden memories of the first months of Christian’s turning. Gabriel and Garcia both nursed him devotedly, did not ever allow him to starve or run mad, and Christian was a remarkably calm and happy fledgling besides, just as there are perfect babies who sleep and eat and throw the minimum of tantrums. Doubtless Hubbard also keeps control of when his fledglings can eat, or withholds it for misbehavior, and Gabriel feels a pang of something stronger than his customary well-bred hatred. He truly, on some soul-deep level, loathes the man.

Indeed, just as he is concluding his act of charity (good works, another thing the bloody Protestants importune about, since according to them it doesn’t matter a damn what sort of man you are, and Gabriel finds that comforting and insulting by turns), there is a sudden sound at the door, and they look up to see the master of the hive himself, struck dumb at this effrontery. Most unfortunately, it does not last for long. “You,” he hisses. “You, you foul – feeding one of mine your filthy blood, your depraved sins – how dare you come here tonight, when you yourself ordered me from your – ”

“Where is the beast?” Gabriel has had enough of sham diplomacy and candied words. He takes his boot off the fledgling and advances on Hubbard menacingly. “Where is the beast you are hiding here, you spineless sack of – ”

Hubbard isn’t remotely as old as either of the de Clermont brothers, turned only fifty years ago at most, but he is not the hive master and leader of the London vampires by accident, and he is not a gibbering fledgling to be arrantly flicked aside. He sets his feet and glares bloody murder. “I will not stand for this. I will complain to the Queen, I shall lay the vile account of your crimes bare in any court of law! All the husbands of London shall rally to my side, you lecherous, you heretical – ”

At that, there’s another flash, and this time Garcia is the one between Gabriel and Hubbard. Indeed, Hubbard is being hoisted into the air and pinned violently against the wall, and Garcia’s eyes are pitch black. “Don’t you,” he breathes, _“even think about it.”_

Gabriel is somewhat impressed at this despite himself, and it affects him more than he thought it would. Still, flattering as it is, he cannot let Garcia start a civil war _just_ yet, and clears his throat. “Darling, do put him down. At least until he talks.”

Garcia glances at him, opens his hand, and lets Hubbard tumble into a wheezing heap at his feet. The bloody priest springs up at once, baring his own fangs, as the fledgling decides that he wants no part of this and scuttles away on all fours, as fast as he can go. The tension is literally murderous. Then Gabriel says, “Answer us, Hubbard, or you will wish you did. What is here? What is this monster you are hiding? Did you invite it, or protect it?”

“Do you think I am as entirely lost to God’s grace and good sense as you?” Hubbard dusts off his cassock, white-faced and snarling. “Do you think I had any choice? It came here, and after it devoured three of my fledglings, I thought it better not to struggle. I wish it gone as dearly as you, but I cannot stop it, I cannot control it. It has settled here and I do not know why. Perhaps it is a scourge from God to punish me for my sins, or to punish the city for still allowing the sinful likes of you to remain.”

“Oh?” Gabriel says. “So why did you lie?”

“Do you think I would ever stand before a room of those degenerates, witches and daemons, and confess to them what lurks in the heart of my own hive?” Father Hubbard looks utterly, furiously incredulous. “Despite how sorely you wish to dishonor everything about it, I alone have some care for the reputation of vampires, and the need to maintain our superiority over the rest of the rabble! You summoned me upon false pretenses and then made a spectacle of it, as if it was my guilt, or my – ”

Despite the possibility that Hubbard might, depressingly, be the smallest bit in the right for once, Gabriel is still not going to apologize to this miserable bastard. “Is it here now?”

“No.” Hubbard’s nostrils flare. “It set out some time ago. Near upon eleven o’clock.”

At that, Gabriel and Garcia glance at each other. They left the Old Lodge at close to eleven o’clock, and while it could be a coincidence, the fact of their quarry leaving here at the same time argues, uncomfortably, as if it might just have known they were coming. How, Gabriel has no idea. But then Garcia grabs his arm, hissing in his ear. “That child Christian brought home. Jack. He said he found him near Blackfriars, and we already know the monster has been feeding on him. What if – ”

“What if the monster can sense something through him, or see through his eyes, or use him as a thrall?” Gabriel _knew_ there was something off about that bloody feral urchin, and worse, they left him back at the Old Lodge with Christian and the rest of the household. At least Papa and the women are in Essex, but is that where the beast is going? Wait until the brothers were out, trying to catch it here, and then strike while they were –

It is sharply clear that either way, they are in the wrong place, and punishment of Hubbard, vastly desirable as it is, has to wait. The de Clermont brothers spin around and pelt out of the hive as fast as they can go – which at their standards is quite fast indeed. There is no care for human sensibilities or anything besides running the mile down the Strand at breakneck speed, and even as they reach the gates of the house, Gabriel can see that something is wrong. The wood is splintered as if hit with a battering ram, broken glass glitters like snow in the mud of the courtyard, there are shouts and panicked sounds and torches being lit, and windows opening down the row as the neighbors wake at the ruckus. A complete, unspeakable terror seizes him, and he burns inside. _“CHRISTIAN!”_

Garcia yells something after him, but he doesn’t hear it, flying across the courtyard and up the stairs, up toward Christian’s room. He trips over something lying in the hall, thinks it might be one of the servants, but doesn’t stop until he bursts into his son’s room – which is silent, the bed tousled and empty. Gabriel is about to lose his entire mind until he hears a shout from the cloisters, and flashes back out. Whereupon he finds Christian, dressed in nightshirt and breeches, in possession of a stout candlestick that he was apparently using to bash any housebreakers over the head, being hugged by Garcia, who looks just as relieved. Gabriel shoves his brother out of the way and grabs his son by the shoulders, scanning him up and down for injuries. It is only when he doesn’t see any that he consents to relax the merest fraction, and kisses his baby several times, hugging him close. God, if something happened to him, if anything ever did – “Christ crucified, _what – ?”_

“I don’t – ” Christian shakes his head, rubbing his face. “Something attacked us. I heard a crash and jumped up, I went to help Master Parry – he’s up there, he – ”

Gabriel realizes belatedly that it must have been the steward he tripped over, but he is not willing to let his son out of his sight long enough to retrieve him. It is Garcia who goes up and carries down the stricken Parry, who is bleeding profusely from a gash in his head, groggy and dazed, even as he is apologizing for failing in his duty of care to protect the household while the master was away. “It was some sort of great ghoul, my lord,” he mutters weakly, as Garcia holds a handkerchief to his head to stanch the bleeding, mouth set in a thin line. “We had no warning, it came upon us from the night sky. It seemed to be looking for something, I think – I rather think we were dreadfully fortunate that the women were away. It wanted Lady Clairmont, it went straight for her chambers first. It – ”

“It was looking for Lucy?” Garcia looks set to leave poor Parry to shift for himself and run straight to Essex this very instant. “Where – where’s the orphan boy? Jack?”

“I am not certain, my lord.” Parry looks alarmed, as he damned well might. “Do you think the beast snatched him, or perhaps it – ”

“I don’t know.” Garcia rises to his feet, and Gabriel can see the fear strung through every sinew of him. Oh Christ, he really does love the witch. Gabriel knew it before, but there is even less denying it now, and it twists in his gut like a fist. “But we need to find out immediately.”


	9. Something Wicked

Lucy is quite sure that she is not going to sleep. Even after they have dismissed Amelie and the fun is over for the night, her mind is whirling madly with the weight of everything they have learned, and she is aware that Agnes and Lady Beaton are looking at her – well, not askance, exactly, though there’s still a sense of awe and wariness, as if she might be more powerful than she ever let on. But this has made it clear that she is of a strange and dangerous family line, that they could be meddling with a magical murder mystery on top of everything else, and that the identity of the culprit could be something that they do or do not want to actually discover. They have agreed to help her and teach her, but Lucy can feel them wondering if she’s been shamming, playing the naïve, ignorant newcomer, in hopes of getting them to reveal their powers and secrets, draw them off their guard. If it is going to be a question of calling Amelie up again, they may help her. Or they may not. They’re both Scottish, they’ve known each other for a long time as part of the same coven and sisterhood, and it is very clear that if need be, they will take each other’s side.

That is not even to mention the small facts that Jessica may have saved the Preston family in the past, that Lucy’s great-whatever grandfather could be the actual book they are looking for, and that vampires and witches can in fact, in some circumstances, interbreed. Lucy has no idea of the details or if there’s a certain kind of spell to achieve (or prevent) this result, or if there’s another tedious Congregation rule insisting that all half-breeds must die, because it seems like the sort of thing they would do. Or maybe it’s implicit in the rule against interspecies relationships. Now that she thinks about it, surely they wouldn’t be so paranoid about it if all the unions were sterile, right? Or maybe they’re just not a fan of tragic star-crossed supernatural romances? But if they don’t want creatures to mingle or marry, there has to be something to it, and this feels like one possible creepy racist pseudo-eugenics reason. But it wasn’t always the case. Richard de Prestyn and Anneke Proktor’s union may have been unusual, but there was no sense that it was illegal. So who did this? Why?

Lucy makes her way upstairs to the lady’s bedchamber in a distracted muddle, accepts Meg’s help to change into her nightclothes, then crawls into bed with her journal. It’s not that late, but there’s not much else to do, and she wants to make some sense of this, even by herself. Once Meg lights the candles on the sideboard and curtsies herself out, it is almost the first time Lucy has been completely alone since she landed in the sixteenth century. It’s odd. Lucy is an academic and an introvert, she is used to keeping her own company, but she’s slowly gotten used to the constant parade of parties and social engagements and servants and all the other reasons that mean actual private time is limited. When she’s in the bedchamber at night, Flynn is there, and now he’s not. She doesn’t _mind_ it – it’s nice not to have her energy drained by constant interaction, not to be observed keenly, on a pedestal, the whispered scandal of London, the strange witch, whatever else people think of when they see her. But she does miss him. He is the one person she can let down her guard with, and they still only really have each other.

Lucy writes for a while, journal braced on a small portable desk designed for this purpose, dipping the quill and splashing ink on her fingers until they are stained blue-black. To say the least, this thing is not a modern rollerball, and it has taken her considerable practice to do so much as not leave blots everywhere. Lucy feels self-conscious about possibly getting drips on the sheets, aware that this is not truly her house, and that past-Maria might be angry at this evidence of dereliction on the part of her newly acquired daughter-in-law. Has Asher told his wife about all this? Surely he must have. Maria is back at Sept-Tours, presumably, along with Wyatt. (Is he named Wyatt yet? Doesn’t she remember something about him getting that name in the nineteenth century?) Maria doesn’t have her ancestral grudge against witches yet, but of course, Asher is still alive. Or is this messing with the future, changing memories, altering actions, in ways they cannot possibly understand or predict? _Time travel._ If Lucy ever thought it would be fun, from a historian’s point of view, to go to various different places and times as a sort of extra-chronological tourist, she is rapidly being disabused of that notion. The potential for extensive headaches is just not worth it. At the very least, she clearly has to avoid anywhere the de Clermonts are, and as they live so long, that is most of it.

Lucy writes steadily, finishes her journal entry, and puts it in a locked drawer. Then she goes over to the basin, scrubs her hands until the water runs ink-dark itself, and still has faint blue stains on her fingers when she’s done. Then she gets back into bed and pulls the covers up, settling down with a long sigh. She isn’t sure that she’s understood anything or actually sorted it out, and her feeling of missing Flynn has only gotten stronger, but it’s just one night and she’s not going to turn into some miserable, pining waif after twenty-four hours away from her husband. (Well, fake husband.) But the feeling of being by herself in 1590 is more anxiety-inducing than relaxing. It’s not like when you’re at home and can just space out and rest. You’re in a strange place with strange people, and anything could happen.

Reminding herself that Asher, at least, is in the house and unlikely to let anything get to her, Lucy closes her eyes and tries to drop off. But she’s just circling around the edges of real sleep when she hears something scratching softly at the window, like the branches of trees. Except the trees are all pruned back to sedate, civilized distances, and as she sits up, she can see some kind of shadow, darker than the deep blue summer dim, falling on the floor. She gets a whiff of something foul, like something dead and rotting, that makes her gorge rise, and all at once, she doesn’t think she should be lying here like a white-gowned damsel just waiting for the monster. If something is trying to get in, she’s going to –

Just as she kicks back the covers and raises a hand full of witchfire, the window breaks with a resounding crash, and something shoots in too fast for Lucy to see. She has a split-second impression of familiarity, the sinking sensation that she knows exactly what it is, before it dives at her, she screams and flings the fireball at it, and it misses, skittering off as ineffectually as if she’s tried to throw a peanut at an elephant. She still can’t get a look at all of it, but those gnarled teeth are unmistakable, snapping and biting at her throat, and hands like claws close around her arms, jerking her fully off her feet. It seems determined to fly straight back out the window with her, Lucy can see no good of letting it do that, and there are crashes and running footsteps outside her room, as other people obviously heard the window break. She kicks and flails, but her toes dangle as ineffectually as a puppet’s. Since the witchfire didn’t do anything, she winds up for a punch, which is likely to be even more farcical. She can’t get enough mustard on it from this angle, and the blow of a small historian is not likely to be a devastating one. That, or –

Lucy’s clawing fingers catch the edge of the hood, jerking it back, and she has the sense of something truly horrible beneath. A dry, desiccated _thing,_ a zombie, looking as if it is slowly returning to some semblance of humanity, but is going to have to drink a lot more young blood to pass for that. Its eyes are blind and white, its teeth snapping at her, and for half a wild second, she thinks she recognizes it. Then it snarls at her, Lucy twists and thrashes and grabs onto the bedpost, but she’s not strong enough and it is going to spirit her out the window and away into the skies and she will never –

The next instant, the bedchamber door bursts open, and something else flashes across the floor too fast to see. Lucy only has a sense of falling, banging her head hard enough to make her see stars, as the newcomer leaps over her, twelve feet in a single bound, and grabs the zombie-creature as it tries to flap out the window. They tumble out together, as Lucy’s scream gets caught in her throat – it’s a three-story fall, and the landing below isn’t exactly soft. But she somehow scrambles to her feet, runs to the broken window, and looks out, not sure what is about to meet her eyes. A battle, or something much worse?

All she can see is the shapes of two indistinct figures, duking it out on the lawn among the elegant greenery and garden ornaments. They are both little more than blurs, but as the zombie-creature slams full-speed into one of the statues, smashing it off its plinth, the other one catches it as easily as a thrown baseball and flings it back. Lucy can make out just enough, by the light of the moon as it peers out from behind a cloud, to see that the second combatant is none other than Asher de Clermont himself. He fights with a lazy, effortless grace, a skill completely incomparable to any other warrior; they might have had ten or twenty years to practice, but he has had literal millennia. His movements are sharp and perfect and he seems to guess his enemy’s feints and lunges before it makes them. The rest of the house is woken, drawn by the ruckus, and candles and lights are struck in various windows, casting an eerie gold-umber glow on the lawn. The creature’s hood is still down, and Lucy recoils from its face. It looks like a man, but only barely. Especially as it tips its ghastly head up, those blank white eyes still fixed directly on her like a hunting shark, and she can sense that it has done anything but give up.

Asher is bare-handed, doesn’t have a sword or knife or anything else to administer the coup de grace, and as he grabs for it, clearly intending to break its neck if need be, the creature flies free. Asher leaps after it, gets hold of its ankle, and almost succeeds in dragging it down, but then one of the servants, clearly thinking that he’s being helpful and defending the master, aims a large blunderbuss at the centre of the confusion and pulls the trigger. The shot goes off, the resulting chaos causes Asher to lose his grip, and the creature shrieks, breaking more windows in the mansion. It hisses something that sounds like, _“De Clermont,”_ and in another flash, like a smoky grey phantom, it takes to the skies and is gone.

Lucy stands paralyzed for an instant longer, then turns and sprints out of the bedroom, running down the stairs and out to the front door. She obviously cannot jump three stories out a window without a scratch, and she’s closely trailed by several members of the household, including Lady Beaton and Agnes. They find Asher on the lawn, uninjured but slightly winded, and wiping some unspeakable black residue off his face with a disgusted expression. Evidently the shot got a bit of zombie goo on him, and he sniffs it, then flings it aside. As Lucy comes hurrying up, he glances up at her and says, as casually as if he has done nothing more remarkable than chase off a nuisance dog, “Are you hurt, my lady?”

“I don’t – I don’t think so, but – ” Lucy is barefoot, wearing nothing more than her blowing nightgown, and one of the servants hands her a shawl in deference to modesty. She pulls it close, shivering for reasons that have nothing to do with cold. “What _was_ that?”

Even as she asks the question, she has a feeling that she knows the answer, and Asher accepts the steward’s help to get to his feet. He aims a slightly severe look at the servant whose inopportune blunderbuss intervention cost him a chance to finish it off, and they cringe and shuffle their feet. “I suspect,” he says, “that it was the thing that my son noted to us before we left London. The – what was it called. David Rittenhouse.”

“It seemed to know you.” Lucy doesn’t know why it shouldn’t, the de Clermonts aren’t exactly random citizens, and the beast would probably be aware of who it was after. But there was something that seemed like real, personal, poisonous hatred in its snarl, and she grasps briefly at an unformed, unlikely thought. “I – I tried to fight it, but I – ”

“I’m not sure you could have stopped it,” Asher says. “It was very strong even for me, and something I have not encountered before. Come, now. Back inside, it could return.”

By dint of his calm and forceful orders, the household shuffles back into the manor, still agog over all this midnight excitement and exchanging worried looks and low-voiced speculation. Lucy is even less sure that she is going to get any sleep, and isn’t in the mood to go right back to bed, especially as her window is still broken. As the servants warm some spiced ale for them in the name of a restorative beverage, and even Asher looks as if he could use a tipple, Lucy says, “So that’s the monster? How did it get here? How would it know where we are, or – ”

“I have ideas. Theories, perhaps. Nothing of which I can be certain.” Asher steeples his fingers contemplatively, magnificent brow drawn in thought. There is still a little black gunk on his cheek, and he flicks it off, as Lucy thinks nervously of Gabriel getting poisoned by a seemingly trivial wound during his fight with Temple. She doesn’t think this is the case again, but she’d also prefer not to take chances. “It does seem, however, that it has a personal interest in you, my lady, and therewith also my son Garcia. It clearly did not mean to kill you, at least not immediately, but rather remove you to its own place of interest. That does not surprise me. You would, of course, be more valuable alive.”

Lucy does not find this comforting, even as she can’t blame Asher for trying to get to the bottom of this unexpected attack on his house. “Thank you for – for, you know.”

“Of course.” He inclines his head to her graciously, as if she need never be in any doubt that he would never stand for her being snatched by an evil flying zombie. “Nor, I must say, do I fancy explaining that to Garcia.”

She isn’t sure if that’s the hint of a joke, a dry, reserved humor, and holds her tongue instead, as the servants arrive with their ale and Lucy has several sips, discovering that she is more shaken than she first thought. She is still rather dazed from bashing her head on the bedroom floor, and a concussion would definitely be very low on the list of helpful things right now. After a long pause, she says, “Do you think it will come back?”

“We would be unwise to discount the possibility.” Asher speaks in a military commander’s voice, which he has so long been, even with his own sons. “It clearly has some manner of knowing our presence, or predicting our movements. I would go and search the grounds and heath, but I think it ill-advised to leave you alone. It could indeed be hoping that I go heedlessly after it, and leave you unguarded for a second assault.”

Lucy shivers. “So,” she says. “It did come after us. _With_ us.”

“Not with you, surely?” Asher’s profile is impassive and sharp-cut in the low light, and it is a generous thing to say, even as Lucy doesn’t know if she deserves it. She feels obliquely responsible for visiting this danger and disruption on them. It would be one thing if Garcia returned here alone, although of course he couldn’t timewalk without her, but she is the fly in the ointment, the wrench in the gears, the person changing everything and drawing zombie-things down on everyone, who wasn’t here last time and has done only negligible good at being here this time. Whatever does get changed here, whatever does get ruined, it feels as if it ultimately falls on her.

“I don’t know.” Lucy looks down at the swimming golden surface of her ale, then takes another deep drink. “We’re the ones who traveled here and put you all in danger. We have good reasons for it, and we believe in what we’re trying to do, but it’s still because of us.”

Asher looks at her with startling gentleness, and for a moment, she thinks he is going to say something else. Whether to reassure her, or delicately ask for more information about when they came from, she can't be sure, but just then, they hear another distant crashing sound in the front hall. Events of the night being what they are, Asher drops his goblet and flashes to his feet, taking up a protective stance, and thus when the solar door bursts open and two shapes hurtle through in total panic, he is only narrowly prevented from throwing his eldest and middle sons directly through the wall. They skid to a halt, breathless, looking back and forth, as Lucy stares at them in utter disbelief. “Garc – Gabri – _what_ are you _doing_ …?”

“Jesus.” Flynn, as it indeed is, wipes his brow with the sleeve of his doublet. Both de Clermont brothers are grimy and windswept, looking as if they have outright sprinted the thirty miles from London to Essex in the dead of night, and stare around with slightly wild expressions on their faces. “We saw – broken windows, are you – ”

“Would you perhaps be in search of a particularly disagreeable monster resembling a dried corpse?” Asher asks. “Aye, it did pay a visit here, barely an hour ago. I saw it off.”

“You – ” It’s just then that Lucy notices that both Garcia and Gabriel are wearing swords, and not the fashionable, fussy dueling rapiers that are standard issue for every strutting Elizabethan peacock. No, these are heavy-duty, two-handed broadswords, probably the very ones they carried on any number of bloody medieval battlefields. They seem equally nonplussed that their use is not immediately called for, as Gabriel turns in a circle, Garcia blinks at his father, and then remembers Lucy, darting over to her in a panic and snatching her up off her feet. _“Moja ljubav,_ are you – ”

“I’m fine,” Lucy says. “I knocked my head a little, and it broke the bedroom window, but your father got there before it – before anything worse could happen.”

Flynn shudders, clearly thinking of her narrow escape from Rittenhouse the first time, and she can practically see him resolving never to let her out of his sight again. He kisses her soundly, to which Lucy has no objection, and doesn’t quite let go even after they pull away, and she frowns up at him. “Wait. How did _you_ two know it was here?”

“We raided Hubbard’s hive,” Flynn says tersely. “He is in fact harboring the monster there, but he insists it was because it ate several of his fledglings and it’s not by choice. Speaking of which, Jack – we think he’s a thrall for Rittenhouse, the way Jessica was for Temple. Must have used him to make sure we were out of the way, left the hive and attacked the Old Lodge first. Then when it didn’t find you, it must have come here. We guessed it would, at any rate, and it unfortunately appears that we were correct.”

“It attacked the Old Lodge?” Lucy is alarmed. “Is everyone – is Christian all right?”

“Yes,” Gabriel says curtly, speaking for the first time. “That was our greatest necessity to be certain of. Of course, my soft-hearted son was very concerned that we should find Jack, as the monster must have snatched him both for a drink and to be sure that he could tell no one else about it or where it had gone. There is good information to be had of the boy, so – Papa, did you say you frightened it off?”

“Indeed.” Asher raises an eyebrow. “I had nothing to kill it with, and one of the servants inopportunely intervened, but it did not manage to leave as it had planned.”

“Then the boy might still be around here.” Gabriel looks set to run back out into the night, in hopes of finding Jack stashed up a tree or behind a large rock. “If I find him, I can bite him and see what he knows of this.”

“Hold on,” Lucy objects. “Bite him _again?_ I’m not suggesting we take him back into our house to keep spying on us, but – ”

Gabriel’s fangs flash at her, in a way that reminds her he will do absolutely anything to protect his family, already ran up here to Essex with Garcia under the fact that she grudgingly qualifies, and is not about to be gainsaid on this. “You leave that to me, sweet sister. I am grateful to see that you are unhurt, and Christian seems to have taken a liking to this poor lost puppy, because of course he has. I shall treat Jack gently enough, if I find him, but we must find a way to break the thrall. Papa, if you will pardon me?”

With that, not waiting for Asher’s answer, Gabriel turns and leaves the solar again, and the door bangs distantly as they see his dark shadow dart away across the grounds. There is a slightly awkward silence as Asher, Garcia, and Lucy try to avoid looking at each other, in the now-familiar shared judgment of Gabriel’s dramatics. Then Lucy says, “If you know now that it – that Rittenhouse is hiding out at Hubbard’s hive, you could go back there with all three of you and take it out, couldn’t you?”

“It is a thought,” Asher says, “but as Gabriel says, there is use to be had in seeing what our enemies know, before merely disposing of them. Besides, any attack by three heavily armed de Clermonts on Hubbard’s hive would very swiftly spill over into a vampire war, or impact upon all the folk of London, creature or mortal. Elizabeth’s deliberate ignorance and careful tolerance, possible only because she does not ask what we are and we keep the queen’s peace, cannot extend to pardoning rampant riot and disorder inflicted upon her unwitting human subjects. And when immortals of this caliber fight, humans always get hurt.”

Lucy can see that he’s right, even as it chafes at her that they can’t just go in guns blazing and drag the beast out. Then she supposes wryly that she has been fake-married to Garcia Flynn for too long, if that occurs to her as the preferred solution. Asher founded the Knights of Lazarus in part for this reason, to keep the supernatural-human balance and defend the daylight world from threats they would never see coming, and Lucy knows that he believes passionately in protecting the defenseless. She has seen in the present how Asher’s legacy and his philosophies about the dangerous nature of immortal power have influenced each of his sons. Surely he’s not suggesting that they leave Rittenhouse at large to terrorize London, and no matter the risks inherent in assaulting Hubbard’s hive, surely the alternative must be worse. She presses, “If you said that Hubbard himself didn’t agree to it, Garcia, surely he’d want help getting Rittenhouse out? Even if it came from you?”

“Doubtful,” Flynn says grimly. “As long as Hubbard makes himself compliant, raises no more objections to Rittenhouse’s presence and turns a blind eye to any indelicate feeding, he holds the key to the most powerful and dangerous creature in London. Nobody will dare attack or molest Hubbard’s hive as long as it is known that the beast resides there, and Hubbard is too damn good a politician not to get his money’s worth for it. He can force the witches or the daemons for concessions, and of course, he can discipline his fledglings, get them to see the mighty dark power that awaits if they set a toe out of line. Hubbard may not want it there, and he claimed that he wanted it gone, but I can guarantee that he doesn’t want it anywhere else. And given our track record, there _would_ be war.”

Lucy chews that over. Yet again, there arises the question of how much is too much to change, the fact that they are interfering in a set matrix that has already played out to a particular conclusion, and starting a full-out fang war would be actively detrimental to future history. But how does that responsibility weigh up over what they need to do, what they _have_ to do? Rittenhouse has clearly come here after them, but does that make them responsible for his presence? He is not going to be in the least constrained by tender considerations for following generations, and Flynn is, to state the obvious, not a man accustomed to fighting with the gloves on. He already suggested essentially torching history to save Asher and Christian. If he’s forced to tiptoe around and make neutered, safe, non-cataclysm-causing moves, is that really going to do anything against Rittenhouse at all? How did he _get_ here? Lucy wishes suddenly she had Carol’s letters again, needs to know if she said anything else about this. Why would Rittenhouse be important to the Prestons? Is he part of the family too?

That is a horrible enough thought that she wishes she didn’t have it, even as the sneaking voice in her head whispers that it’s not implausible. If Rittenhouse is a timewalker and came here from another century, it’s possible that he too is descended from Amelie Wallis, and hence from Richard and Anneke. Lucy already noticed with Jessica that destiny seems to be clustering especially closely around this bloodline, a powerful and talented and troublesome lot, and while not every timewalking witch springs from the same root, everyone says it’s a very rare skill. With all this question of creature genetics, of the potential heightened abilities of cross-breeds, wouldn’t it make sense to be particularly strong in one branch of a family? Especially if that family was founded by the union of a vampire and a witch?

That reminds Lucy, however, that there’s something she should probably talk to Flynn about. If they aren’t going to stand here awkwardly waiting for Gabriel to return, with or without Jack, they might as well go upstairs and hash it out. She tugs at his hand. “Garcia?”

“Mmm? What? Yes.” He shakes himself and, for once, picks up on her unspoken intention – see, they’re getting better at this silent marital communication thing. He follows her protectively upstairs to the bedchamber, whereupon his mouth goes thin at the sight of the broken glass on the floor, the gaping dark hole in the window, and the clear evidence of a struggle. He clearly can’t quite trust that she escaped _totally_ unscathed, and cups her head in both hands and seems to be checking her eyes for signs of brain damage. This is sweet of him, but unnecessary, and he frowns worriedly. “Did you – ”

“Garcia, I’m _fine._ ” Lucy pulls him down to sit on the bed next to her. “Actually, I need to tell you about something else that happened this evening. Before… all that.”

With that, she explains their success in summoning Amelie Wallis – or, as she was at the time, Amelie Prestyn, and the many unsettling things that she told them. Flynn looks even less enthused about the idea of Jessica running around in Innsbruck and getting mixed up with Heinrich Kramer, who is a legendarily nasty piece of work, but it’s less clear if that is due to personal concern for Jessica’s safety (unlikely) or the further ripple effects that she could have on everything. “Wait,” he says at the end, once Lucy has gotten to the subject of Richard and Anneke and their marriage – and their son Henry, Amelie’s father, the one whose unexplained death may have resulted in him being skinned and made into Ashmole 782. “So vampires and witches – they _definitely_ can have – ”

“I don’t know,” Lucy cautions. “I don’t know if it’s possible with all of them, or if it’s a special circumstance, or – whatever. But yes, in this case, it seems it is.”

Flynn remains frowning for a moment longer, before his eyes light up in total horror and he leaps off the bed as if it has suddenly caught on fire. “We have – twice, are you – is there any chance that _you_ might be – ”

“I’m not pregnant,” Lucy says reflexively, even though it is obviously too early for her to be completely sure in any case. She doesn’t think so, for whatever reason, but she was not expecting unprotected sex to be an issue when sleeping with a vampire. If it’s true that they need to find some sort of magical birth control (she thinks the only option for condoms in the sixteenth century are socks, which _no thank you_ ), then they can do that, but Flynn is still looking horrified. “It would be ironic if I was, since Meg was so convinced of it – but no. No, I’m not. I’ll see if I can ask Lady Beaton about it, but – ”

“Are you – ” Flynn clearly does not want to interrogate her too untowardly about her feminine mystique, but he still looks wary and wild-eyed, pacing and waving his arms like a drunken windmill. “If you – you _can’t –_  ”

“No,” Lucy repeats, a little hurt at his apparent insistence that this would be the worst thing to ever happen. She is not remotely in the mood to risk anything passing for Tudor obstetric medicine, and she will be conscientious about tracking down whatever she has to, but it’s never completely flattering when the man you love looks as if he might have a heart attack at the thought of ever having a family with you. Lucy’s not made up her mind about whether she wants kids, not exactly, and to say the least, Flynn has issues around this subject stretching back a literal millennium and a half. This is not the time, this could not possibly be less of the time, and she supposes that they’re lucky they found out about this now, before they could in fact possibly have an accident. But every normal human grownup in a possibly procreative relationship has to talk about kids and birth control and family planning with their partner, and if Flynn is shooting bolts at the very mention of it, Lucy might be giving him too much credit to think he could handle anything else. “Garcia, I promise, it’s not – we aren’t even actually married yet, this is a while off, but – ”

“Maybe we should…” Flynn looks as if he is working himself up to suggesting something deeply unpleasant, that he nonetheless is honor-bound to put forth for the sake of form. “You know, not sleep together any more. Just to be completely safe.”

“Why am I not surprised that your solution to this problem is to immediately suggest total celibacy again?” Lucy can’t help it, she’s frustrated, and it shows through in her voice. “Trust me, I could not be in more agreement that it’s the last thing we need right now. But this idea that a woman can either have sex with the possibility of pregnancy or not have sex at all – I’m sorry, that is _one_ thing I’m glad we have left in the past, thank you very much. I know there are herbal recipes and folk medicine if nothing else, but I’d be very surprised if witches, who are often women and have been for hundreds of years, never invented a birth control spell and anything else to do with fertility magic. Agnes is called the Wise Wife of Keith, I’m entirely sure she can help me. Unless this is just another excuse to back away, if you regret what we did, or – I’ve asked you a hundred times, but if you still won’t tell me, you won’t _talk_ to me or trust me, then we can’t do this in any number of ways, and – ”

She is rising to the brink of a shout, and bites her tongue. Flynn looks stunned, as yet again, he has failed to grasp the emotional complexities of this situation or the fact that it might be hurtful for him to immediately suggest they stop having proper intimate relations, when they have only just, tentatively, actually started. Lucy wants to be angry at him, but she just feels tired. She does not intend to give him up just to avoid getting knocked up, she doesn’t want to be knocked up right now anyway, and she realizes why he would panic about everything to do with fatherhood, she does. Maybe he wants a couple decades to sort out his relationship with Jiya first, which would be understandable, but Lucy is mortal and will live an ordinary lifespan, and she’d be in her fifties by then. She doesn’t run on the luxury of unlimited time, the reason Gabriel and Garcia constantly put off fixing their broken relationship, apparently assuming that there would always be a chance later if they changed their stubborn, _stupid_ minds, until it was too late. She doesn’t _know,_ but she at least wants the _choice._

There is a long pause as they stare at each other, Flynn clearly scrabbling to figure out how he put his foot in it this time. Then he snaps his mouth shut with a click, which is always his best option, and creeps back to sit down next to her again. “I’m sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” Lucy feels numb, dull, drained, but she is under so much pressure that she feels like someone has crammed too many beads on a string and it’s about to break and scatter all over the floor. And in some sense, he is the only person she _can_ shout at, knowing that he will take it and won’t hurt her or form a disparaging opinion of her manners or report to the Queen about her, that he is the only person with whom she is ever truly safe. She feels close to tears. “I’m sorry, Garcia, I – I’m sorry, I just – ”

“Shh.” He scoops her into his arms, holding her against his strong chest, clearly sensing that the best route to fixing this is a lot of cuddles and not saying anything else inflammatory. (On that, at least, he is not wrong.) “Shhh, _moja ljubav,_ shh. I just – I was frightened. I couldn’t – I worry about you enough as it is. If it was you and a child – ”

“I know, I know.” Lucy nestles her head restlessly against his collarbone, exhausted and anxious at the same time, wanting desperately to collapse into paramount unconsciousness but too highly strung for that. “Besides, there’s always some obnoxious subplot about trying to kill it because It Is An Abomination To All Creaturekind or whatever. It’s already against the Covenant for us to be together, so I don’t imagine they’d take this well. But I – ” She hesitates. “I just didn’t – if you were completely repulsed by the idea, I – ”

“Shh, no, no, of course not.” He continues rocking her, dropping small kisses onto her hair. “I just reacted badly. Again. Shhh.”

Lucy appreciates his cuddling and his clumsy efforts to make up for it, but she is still too fractious to be easily calmed, keeps feeling the anxiety magnifying and sparking in her blood. It is very late; indeed, with the short summer hours of darkness, the night has already started to leaven with approaching sunrise. But she wants him to put his mouth where his money is, and there is a certain heightened need coming in the wake of both their argument and a near-death experience. Before she can think better of it, she says, “Bite me.”

He looks down at her, startled, but at least he doesn’t pull away. “What?”

“Bite me,” Lucy repeats. “You’re barely eating – I think you’ve, what, fed twice since we got here? Once on Gabriel and once on your father? It’s been over a month, I know you’re hungry, and for some reason, you – you won’t. With me. You’ve done it before, remember? I don’t know if you suddenly decided that I was made of glass again, but I – I just – please.”

She doesn’t want to beg, but her fists close on his shirt anyway, raw and desperate, and Flynn still looks as if it has never occurred to him that it would be anything apart from an unavoidable and slightly messy burden for her. Good God Almighty, this man has a strong claim to being the thickest that ever lived, and that’s a high bar to clear. But after another pause, he searches her face for any hesitation, doesn’t find it, and finally licks his lips and nods tersely. He lifts her up, laying her gently back into the pillows, and gets up to shuck his boots, swordbelt, cloak, and other dirty and poky accessories. Once he is stripped down to his shirt and breeches, he climbs back onto the bed and settles himself carefully on top of her, bracing his weight on his elbows. He extends his fangs, lowers his head to her neck, and kisses and licks lightly at the bumping thread of her pulse at the vein. Then, quick and sharp, so she barely feels the pain except for a brief burning sting, he bites.

Lucy arches her back, lifting herself up into him, as the lazy, giddy euphoria of the feed begins to ripple through her body. Flynn is apparently trying a few things, drinking quickly or slowly, changing the tempo of his little gulps as his hand runs down her side, cups around her hip, and then works its way between them. Lucy utters a slightly frenzied little whine into the side of his head as he pushes up her nightgown and starts thumbing her clit in time to his sucks. As ever, he is careful not to take too much, but as the deft, relentless work of his hand starts pushing her toward the edge, as he slides a finger and then two inside her and uses it to augment the efforts of his thumb, he takes two hard, deep sucks that send white sparks cartwheeling through her vision. She sighs, moans, and comes harder than she ever has in her life, clenching tightly around his slick fingers as he keeps wringing every bit of sensation out of her, takes one more drink, then pulls back. He kisses and licks the small puncture marks, encouraging them to close over, and sits up, wiping his mouth with his other hand and looking somewhat pleased with himself. “Better?”

Lucy feels hot, wet, and completely flattened, every inch of tension having run out of her along with anything resembling solid flesh or bone. She lies there, wrung-out and flushed, dewy and quivering, as he settles back down next to her, wrapping himself around her as if in personal promise that he will kill the next hooded hellbeast that comes busting in here. “Shh, _ma lionne,_ ” he says, kissing her ear. “Sleep. I’m with you.”

He is, he _is,_ and _god,_ he is so very frustrating, but she loves him so much, and she does not want to be anywhere else in the world than in his arms. Lucy is exhausted for any number of reasons, and can barely keep her eyes open an instant longer. So she closes them, and crashes beneath the surface of a deep, catatonic unconsciousness.

They both sleep several dreamless hours, and wake sometime late the next morning, still tangled together and knotted in the quilts. Lucy supposes that it’s an unfortunate way for it to happen, but she can’t object to getting her first proper lie-in in weeks. Once she manages to peel her sticky eyes open, she looks down at Flynn, regretfully decides that it would probably be a bad idea to have the full event before she makes those enquiries about magical birth control, and reflects that being a responsible adult is really a drag sometimes. That doesn’t mean they can’t have any fun at all, and she drags her mouth over him, waking him up with small kisses and light nips, until a crack of greeny-hazel shows under his lashes and he utters appreciative groans as she makes her way downward. Then she takes him in her mouth, and it turns into whispered, incoherent swearing.

Lucy is pleased with this effect, sets to her work with vigor, and within the span of a few minutes, has succeeded in reducing Flynn to the same speechless, trembling jelly state in which he left her last night. Once she has sat up and wiped her mouth, and he is completely cross-eyed and has torn actual holes in the sheets, it is another several minutes before he can finally work up the gumption to speak. “Jesus.”

“Mmm.” Lucy leans down, nuzzling his nose with hers, and they kiss again. She is glad that the idea of strict celibacy has died the swift, lonely death it richly deserves, but can’t be entirely sure that it won’t recur later, because Garcia Flynn. At any rate, they should probably get their hands off each other and actually get around to heading downstairs and dealing with the myriad outstanding crises that doubtless remain. “Should we go back to London today?”

“Our audience with Dee isn’t until Friday,” Flynn says. “You and Agnes and Lady Beaton probably have more work to do. I’ll have to get back and see what the hell is going on, I imagine, but if you return tomorrow, that gives you another day to practice.”

“I suppose.” Lucy kisses him again, then rolls out of bed, wondering if she should summon Meg to dress her in her clearly ruffled and post-coital state, but then, this is the sort of thing that one’s lady’s maid is trained to discreetly overlook. Once Flynn has thrown on his shirt and breeches and thumped out, Meg arrives to do the honors for Lucy, and looks at her flushed cheeks, tangled hair, and kiss-wet lips. “So,” she says delicately. “It has all – been sorted out, that is? With my lord? Saving your pardons, my lady?”

“Er, yes, I hope so.” Lucy coughs. “Actually, Meg, I had a question. If I wanted to – to not get a child, do you know anything that would be meant to do that?”

Meg’s surprise is obvious, as most Elizabethan married couples would be much more interested in ensuring they had children, rather than preventing them. Infant mortality rates are not as completely terrible as they could be, but plenty of children still don’t see the age of twelve, the family is the natural and expected unit of society, and children are valuable as heirs to estates and daughters for marriage alliances – or in ordinary working families, as part of the household economic production. That said, women have had strategies for managing or spacing their pregnancies in every age and era in the world. Lucy wrote her goddamn PhD thesis on the Voynich manuscript arguing that it was just that, after all, and Meg thinks for a moment. Then she says, “Is everything – I mean, my lady, is there something amiss? If it is a woman’s complaint, I could find a midwife, or – ?”

“Ah, not as far as I know, no.” Lucy can feel her ears heating. Meg is evidently not going to suggest Agnes, the wise woman already in residence beneath this roof; witches are known to slaughter babies and drink their blood in Black Mass sacrifices, after all, and it’s clear that Meg thinks no innocent child needs to be anywhere near Agnes, no matter how harmless and grandmotherly she looks, just in case. Meg seems to feel that Lucy’s reticence might owe itself to everything not working, or there being some kind of disease or vaginal tear or something else to make sex and childbirth uncomfortable and unpleasant. “I just – I would prefer not to, just this very moment.”

Meg is clearly not sure if this is something she should arrange without Flynn’s knowledge, in case she might be knowingly conspiring to deprive the lord of his rightful expectation to heirs. But she’s already agreed to overlook quite a bit more outrageous behavior from her employer, and finally nods. “There are certain herbs, my lady – tansy, pennyroyal – but they can be dangerous if taken in quantity, or cause bleeding that will not stop. But I will ask the old goodwife in Islington that saw to my sister’s confinements.”

“Thank you.” Lucy waits as Meg finishes her dressing, then turns to her. “I mean it. And I’ve discussed this with Garcia – my lord. So you’re not going behind his back.”

“The pair of you are – strange.” Meg bites her tongue. “But I’m glad to hear so.”

She finishes Lucy’s toilette, braids her hair and pins it up, and sees herself out, and Lucy makes her way downstairs, hearing voices coming from the kitchen. When she lets herself in, she finds Asher, Gabriel, and Garcia all keeping an eagle eye on a battered and scratched-up Jack, who is inhaling a bowl of porridge with honey as if his life literally depends on it. It might, for that matter, and Lucy shoots a questioning look at her brother-in-law, who returns it with an expression of blankness slightly too studied to be entirely genuine. There are fresh bite marks visible on Jack’s neck, but it’s not clear if those are from Gabriel or from Rittenhouse, and Lucy hopes that Gabriel at least would feel _some_ qualms about chomping into a child like a Christmas turkey. She can’t really ask the obvious questions about his retrieval and/or disenchantment while he’s there, and waits until Meg arrives to take firm but kind charge of the boy and marches him off for a wash. Then she says, “So you did…?”

“I found him about a mile off,” Gabriel says. “I cannot be certain whether Rittenhouse forgot him in his haste to depart, or if he left him there on purpose to keep watch on the house. There was a thrall on the boy, a strong one, but I mesmered him so he did not feel a thing, and drained enough of the poison from him to break it. At least for now.”

Lucy remembers Agnes saying that she did not like something about Jack, that they should be wary of him, and wonders if that alone was it. “Should we still have him here?”

“I could return him to Blackfriars,” Gabriel says. “Strictly speaking, he is Hubbard’s responsibility. But I would be condemning him to a slow, draining death, as Rittenhouse seems to intend to keep him alive as long as he can to get the most blood from him, then dispose of him. And I have seen for myself what sort of father Hubbard is to his brood, and no matter my other flaws, I will not have truck with it. My son will be most upset if I let anything happen to his pet, and there is more use to be had from him.”

Lucy glances sidelong at him. “So you’ll tend to Jack? If nothing else, for Christian’s sake?”

“I would do anything for Christian.” Gabriel speaks utterly matter-of-factly; he does not need to boast or preen about it, but nor will he stand for it to be challenged or questioned in any way. “If that includes attempting to civilize grubby young urchins, or at least preventing them from being done to death in unfortunate fashion, then yes. From what I tasted of him last night, he has had no part in this, and tried to run away from the Old Lodge rather than suffer Rittenhouse to descend upon it and hurt us. We are likely the only folk to show him any sort of kindness in his short life, and while I know you may have good reason to question my honor, my lady, that does not extend to murdering innocent children in cold blood.”

Lucy flinches. “I was never suggesting you would.”

Gabriel does not answer, but picks up the nearest wine goblet and takes a drink, appearing neither to notice or care that it is yesterday’s sour dregs. He avoids the gaze of his father and brother, then gets to his feet. “I should be back to London. I mislike leaving the house without any of us for long, and I have other enquiries to make besides. Papa, I will leave the boy here for your examination, so you may contrive a more permanent way of undoing the thrall. Garcia, when you return, perhaps you shall do me the courtesy of waiting on me then? There is more to be done. Good day.”

With that, Gabriel bends over his father’s hand, exchanges air kisses with Garcia and Lucy fast enough to resemble a handsome blur, and once more gets the fuck out of there. They are left in that accustomed post-Gabriel state of mild stupefaction, not sure whether to be more annoyed or concerned, until Asher glances at Flynn. “Have you said anything to him?”

“I tried to explain last night, when we were at Hubbard’s.” Flynn looks frustrated. “I can’t help it that he seems set on being an utter – ”

Asher raises the other eyebrow, and whatever colorful insult Flynn was set to call his brother dwindles into unfortunate oblivion. Then the de Clermont patriarch rises to his feet as well. “I will remain here with Lucy if you also wish to return to London today, Garcia. We do of course hope that my services in defending her will not be called for again, but if they are, you may be assured that I will not fail in their execution.”

“I don’t doubt _you,_ Papa,” Flynn says, with a slight and pointed stress on the ‘you’ that its target is not around to appreciate. “But if you are going to keep Jack here and try to undo his thrall, just – be careful, all right?”

“I would be nothing less.” Asher looks for a moment as if he might say something else, then decides against it. He and Lucy see Flynn to the door, where Flynn bends to kiss her, and both of them cling a little longer than necessary. Then Flynn bows to his father as well, only for Asher to completely startle him by pulling him into a proper embrace. No matter how demonstratively affectionate a father Gabriel is with Christian, it’s still not the norm, and Lucy gets the sense that Asher prefers to show his love by setting a strong example and holding the family together. Flynn freezes up, then hugs his father back, coughing rather a lot, and Asher steps back, taking hold of his shoulders and looking at him as if in all-too-terrible recognizance of the fact that someday, sometime in the unknown future, he will no longer be able to. “Go on, Garcia,” he says. “I will mind your wife.”

“Ah. Yes. Thank you, Papa.” Flynn harrumphs again, turning away in search of a discreet way to rub the back of his hand across his eyes, then gives Lucy one more kiss and pulls on his cloak. They stand there watching him until he is out of sight down the drive, and then Asher politely excuses himself to go see to Jack. For her part, Lucy decides not to waste the practice time, and goes to find Lady Beaton.

They make their way out to the long lawn where Rittenhouse and Asher were fighting last night, the turf still scuffled and torn up from the immortal cage match. Lady Beaton glances at it with lips pursed. Then she turns to Lucy. “Did ye ever ken what yon beastie was?”

“I… sort of.” Lucy isn’t sure how much information to share with the older witch, even though Lady Beaton heard everything with Amelie last night. She clearly doesn’t like Hubbard, which she can’t be blamed for, but she is also too good a politician not to profit from the situation, and she’s definitely not constrained by any desire to make things easier for Elizabeth. Lady Beaton might well welcome a full-scale imbroglio for the Protestant whore who killed Queen Mary, and if it comes at the vampires’ expense, all the better. “We’re working on it.”

Lady Beaton glances at her with one plucked eyebrow arched, but decides not to press for details. Lucy, eager to change the subject, goes on, “Before we start, I had a question. We learned last night that under certain circumstances, a vampire and a witch can procreate, and I was wondering if you knew anything more about that.”

“What?” Lady Beaton glances at her in surprise. “You dinna want bairns with your husband? True, he’s an idiot, and a bloodsucker to boot, but he’d give you strong children, and you could then have the charge of raising them.”

“I’m not sure, I just… not now.” Lucy rolls up her sleeves, preparing to return to the work of conjuring a familiar. Aside from the need to prevent herself from inadvertent motherhood, she is trying to delicately pry for information about the abilities of hybrids that might explain Rittenhouse, and why anyone would want to make Henry de Prestyn into a book, but does not want to say so directly. “Is there an edict against it?”

Lady Beaton shrugs. “Nay, no edict that I ken, but ‘tis a very rare thing, and the results unpredictable. The name for such creatures is the Bright Born, and they can have the long lives of vampires and the magic of witches. No very comfortable for those on either side, ye see. If your many-times great-grandsire was one such thing, then aye, someone could ha’ taken an interest in him, and sought to gain his abilities for themselves, by some dark and evil devising. Perhaps they killed him directly for that purpose, or perhaps he met his death by some other misfortune and some unscrupulous twa-bit huckster offered bits of him as a most magical creature. Ye ken what cannibals these men are, Lady Clairmont. They would care nothing for the manner or reason of his death, and only what could be gained from it.”

Lucy has to agree. Medical or research ethics are very far from any sort of thing in the sixteenth century, and if Henry de Prestyn dropped dead of unrelated causes, however unlikely that is, he could have fallen victim to someone selling him off, like relics of a saint, to educated gentlemen with magical or alchemical or occult interests. She has an odd feeling that she’s missed something, that the answer is right under her nose, but can’t bring it to mind. _Educated gentlemen with magical interests._ That certainly describes the School of Night, doesn’t it? She doesn’t think Sir Walter Raleigh would actually order a man murdered for the sake of scientific specimen or study, and she doesn’t want to think so, since she found him gracious and charming. But that’s a slender thread to dangle anything from, and they have to explore all possibilities. They have thought this whole time that the School would help them _find_ Ashmole 782, but what if they _made_ it? What if they have worked with Dee all along, and the reluctance to let them speak to the esteemed alchemist is not just a matter of judiciously avoiding Elizabeth’s wrath, but fear of what he might say?

No, Lucy thinks. Sir Walter himself got them the audience with Dr. Dee, he wouldn’t have done that if he wanted to avoid them meeting him at any cost. But if so, would that not be a shrewd maneuver on its own? Hedging too long about keeping them apart might provoke suspicion, and if he went and spoke to Dee privately beforehand, he could have warned him that some subjects were not to be broached, and that he needed to be on guard when Lucy and Flynn arrived. But Raleigh certainly seemed insistent that nothing could be discussed until the matter of Roanoke had been settled, and if he was hoping to put them off for months…

Lucy really hopes she’s wrong about this, and it’s possible that Raleigh neither gave the order nor had anything to do with its execution. But that would be comparable to Elizabeth’s studied ignorance of the supernatural world, where explicit guilt is avoided only by never uttering it out loud, even if the truth is well suspected. Would Marlowe know about this? It seems unlikely that he wouldn’t, and Flynn has certainly given the daemon no incentive to help him. Marlowe is both a leading member of the School and some sort of double agent, though for whose side is entirely inscrutable. He is in love with Flynn but sleeping with Gabriel, and still might sell them both out, as well as Lucy, if the price was right. Accusing him to his face would definitely backfire, and besides, accuse him of what? Lucy has no evidence that a crime has even been committed, far less by who. But she’s suddenly wondering if it’s a good idea to walk into their audience with Dee on Friday so unprepared. They might well need to ask several more questions first, but if they suddenly reschedule it at the last minute, will that also be suspicious?

Lucy tries to focus on the work, since Lady Beaton is giving her censorious looks urging her to pay attention, but all of this keeps running through the back of her head. Lady Beaton informs her that there are indeed women’s charms, things not for the knowledge or eyes of men, that she can procure, if Lucy is indeed serious about not conceiving. Lucy tells her that she is, and figures that between magical and mundane methods, something has to work. It isn’t the pill or Depo-Provera or an IUD or any of the modern medical options, but the human race survived for thousands of years without Big Pharma. They’ll get by.

The two witches practice for the rest of the day, until Lucy can almost reliably conjure a familiar, a fireball that has the shape of a dragon. She thinks it’s female (as Donkey would say, a _girl_ dragon!) though she can’t say why. It’s a pretty thing, made of incandescent gold-glittering flame, that swoops and loops around Lucy’s head in lazy circles and perches on her shoulder with an almost insubstantial weight, claws digging in hot little pricks into her flesh. Lady Beaton eyes it approvingly. “Ye’ve made vast strides these two days, Lady Clairmont. I think ye have the makings of a great witch indeed. What shall ye call it?”

Lucy didn’t know that she was supposed to pick out a name for the creature, or if it has one that it will reveal to her in due course. She says that she’ll think about it, and as the sun has dropped low in the trees, she wonders if this is the time to give it its first order. “How far can it be separated from me?”

“It depends,” Lady Beaton says. “Some witches’ familiars can go out many miles across the countryside, gather the talk and gossip, and then return to their mistresses’ sides, but yours is newly made, and I wouldna tax it so just yet. All will come in time.”

Lucy supposes this is sensible, and that her first thought of ordering it to London to spy on Walter Raleigh can probably wait. Since this is enough work for the day, they go inside to change and sit down to supper, where Agnes, having kept an eye on their progress from an upstairs window, is complimentary of the results. “A quick study indeed, Lady Clairmont. Were ye thinkin’ to call up Mistress Wallis again tonight?”

“No, not yet. We need to find out more about what – what’s happened, before we do.” Lucy is also wary of annoying Amelie too much, in her old fear that she’s imposing on everyone, though they might call her up years since they last talked to her, on her end. Besides, they do need more solid information on Henry de Prestyn, and it’s clear that Amelie either doesn’t know or won’t say what happened to her father. Probably the former at this point, but still.

The witches retire to their respective rooms after supper, as Asher has been busy with Jack all day, and Lucy wonders if she should seek him out and/or pay a call in the name of politeness. Then again, if Zombiehouse does turn up again tonight, she might see him whether or not she does so or not. Everyone dearly hopes not, but still.

Lucy does not get much sleep that night, as she is entirely too prone to opening her eyes with a start at small noises, but it passes without any assaults from evil monsters. She wakes up relatively early the next morning, and decides that she’d like to get back to London as soon as possible. The meeting with Dee is tomorrow, and she wants to have time to confer with Flynn about her suspicions beforehand, see if there is any profitable intelligence to be unearthed in the interim. So she gets up and quickly packs her things, opens the drawer to take her journal out, and –

It’s subtle enough that she doesn’t notice at first. But there is definitely something disturbed around it, a slight magical aura that does not belong to her, and it is enough to make her certain that someone has been in here, someone has been reading this. If it was another witch, Agnes was in the house by herself all of yesterday while Lucy and Lady Beaton were working. Or it could have been Lady Beaton herself, though Lucy isn’t sure when she would have had the opportunity. Asher has had custody of Jack the whole time, and it is extremely unlikely that a feral street child has the least idea how to read. _Could_ Rittenhouse have returned last night in a much more subtle and undetectable way? Is he getting stronger? But if he was here, why not just snatch her again and fly out the window, like he tried the first time?

Lucy doesn’t know, and isn’t sure whether to confront either of the older witches with her suspicions. Agnes is justified in wanting more information about this mess that she has been summoned into, but Lucy can’t help but feeling it is a breach of trust. This is her journal, her private thoughts, the one personal refuge that she has aside from Flynn, and she doesn’t like the thought of anyone reading it, especially for unknown purposes. She stuffs it into her bag, goes downstairs, and gives orders for the carriage to be readied.

An hour-odd later, they are all aboard and leaving the New Lodge, on their way back into London, Asher once more decorously accompanying them. This time it also includes Jack, looking scrubbed and meek and silent, so the ride is even more crowded than before. Meg, who seems to have taken a liking to the lad, lets him sit on her lap and points things out the window to him, as Jack listens in intent, solemn-faced attention. When he’s not inadvertently responsible for summoning demonic entities to kill them, he _is_ pretty cute.

They take a lot longer getting back to London than they did getting out, since the road has flooded into a bog of mud in several places, and they are caught in an insanely slow-moving queue leading to Aldgate, since it’s a market day and people from outside the city are thronging inside with goods and livestock. Everyone is hot, hungry, and more than ready to get out of the damn carriage by the time they bump through the gates of the Old Lodge some six hours later, and at the sound of it, Flynn comes hurrying out. It was probably a nice run of no more than thirty minutes for him, and the delay must have had him worried. “There you are,” he says, lifting Lucy down. “I thought – ”

“No, we weren’t accosted,” Lucy says wryly. “This time. Just usual traffic.”

Everyone piles out like clowns from an overstuffed car. Agnes is shown inside, and Lady Beaton collects her maid and makes ready to retire to her own house in the city. Then there’s a sound at the far side of the courtyard, and Christian hurries out, looking completely distraught. “Grandfather, Aunt Lucy, I – it is my fault that the beast knew where to find you. I could have brought great harm to you, and I – I am so profoundly sorry, I cannot – ”

Lucy is both amused and sympathetic as Flynn’s nephew throws himself to his knees in the mud, clearly looking as if this is the worst insult ever wrought and there is nothing too extreme to ask of him in penitence. Asher, behind her, also surveys his grandson with a look as if he is biting his cheek so as not to smile. “It’s not your fault, lad,” he says. “You did bring Jack here, aye, but your heart was good. I have done what I can for him, on your father’s insistence.”

“I just…” Christian sniffs. “I could not stand to think that he had been left alone, and nobody to give a fig for him. It is not just that so many children and other innocents must suffer, when so many others have the means to care for them.”

“It is not,” Asher agrees, with a fond look in his eye as if this sweet, sweet boy is in some ways the de Clermont the most after his own heart, with Christian’s dogged insistence that they all do their part to make life better for others insofar as they can. “Your aunt and I are ultimately undamaged, as you can see, so you needn’t flog yourself for too long. Where _is_ your father, by the way?”

“Oh, uh.” Christian goes that faint hue of pink that is the most that vampires can manage of a blush. “I think he may, er, have gone to commence, ah, indecencies with Master Marlowe.”

Asher looks tolerantly exasperated, but not surprised, at this news of his eldest son’s evening itinerary, and it is not clear whether he then intends to track him down and interrupt him from them or just leave him bloody to it. He helps Christian up and assures him that he is forgiven, as Jack steps out of the carriage, spots Christian, and Christian rushes over to greet him like a much-loved little brother. Lucy is the one who has to bite her smile this time, since looking at Christian could make anyone actually want children, then turns to Flynn. Low-voiced, she says, “I need to tell you something.”

He frowns, offers her his arm, and escorts her inside, the back of the house away from prying ears. Lucy economically spills her suspicions that Raleigh may have had something to do, intentionally or unintentionally, with acquiring the body of Henry de Prestyn for further magical study, and that he may have arranged for Dr. Dee to receive it and/or to write Ashmole 782 as an investigation of its nature. Flynn’s frown deepens, as he has obviously been spending a lot of time with Raleigh over the last several weeks, and she can see him resisting the idea that his friend would be capable of this to start with, much less deliberately concealing it from him. “There are certainly those who would do that, yes,” he concedes, when Lucy is finished. “But Sir Walter isn’t – he is not someone who strikes me as the sort, and I have known him a long time.”

“You used to know him,” Lucy corrects, as gently as she can. There are obviously over four hundred years separating this Flynn from his last acquaintance with Raleigh, and she also doesn’t see the man as the type, but they do have to think of everything. “And we’ve always known that the School of Night is involved with this somehow, and that they know more than they’re saying. We need to find more about Richard and Anneke de Prestyn, their family, and anything they were involved with. I assume that is Preston in Lancashire, like you asked me about that one time in Woodstock. Apparently my family is from there after all.”

“Apparently,” Flynn agrees, though he’s still abstracted. “But if we need to find information about creatures from Lancashire, we can’t exactly – ” He stops. “Oh, son of a bitch.”

“What?” Lucy frowns at him. He wears the look of a man who has just had a brainwave, and is wishing very much that he didn’t. “Did you think of something? Some _one?”_

“Unfortunately,” Flynn says, “I am afraid that I did. There aren’t that many creatures outside of London, so they all know each other at least in passing and have for many generations. Besides, Lancashire adjoins Yorkshire. Who do we know from Yorkshire who is a creature, who is experienced in the art of covert intelligence gathering, and very well could be friends or distant neighbors with the Prestyns at this very moment?”

It takes a few seconds for Lucy to put the pieces together, and then she is strongly tempted to echo his reaction. “Oh no,” she says. “Not him.”

“Yes indeed.” Flynn’s smile is as grim as winter. “Guy Fawkes.”


	10. A Series of Unfortunate Events

Flynn and Lucy spend the evening with a quandary equally as pressing as to whether one should ever actually ask Guy Fawkes for help with anything, which is still their main concern. Their audience with Dr. Dee is bright and early tomorrow morning, but given what Lucy has just explained, they aren’t sure if they should go without quite a bit of extra preparation. Since it was so difficult to arrange the damn thing in the first place, they don’t know if they should cancel it, just in case they never get it again. They don’t have time to do any advance reconnaissance now, and there’s something to be said for just wading in there anyway and seeing what turns up. But both of them feel as if they wouldn’t know the right questions to ask, wouldn’t know if they were in fact being baldly cheated and/or deceived, and even if a last-minute cancellation might be suspicious, it could also beat a few roaches out of the rushes and force them to make some kind of move, which would be easier to track than blind stabs in the dark. All in all, after a worried few hours of discussion, it’s settled. Lucy will feign a sudden illness to explain their discourtesy in being unavailable to attend Dr. Dee at the promised time, and Flynn will hopefully reschedule their visit for next week. In the meantime, same as ever, improvise like hell.

With that, they put on a miniature performance for the household, as Lucy announces loudly that she feels quite tired and out of sorts after the excursion to Essex and the frightening ordeal therein, and retires dramatically to bed. Flynn makes an equal show of playing the solicitous husband, since neither of them have ruled out the possibility that there’s another spy among the staff. (Karl comes to mind, for one, though Lucy _hopes_ that saving his life would have produced a modicum of gratitude.) They need to sell the charade for the benefit of anyone who might be snooping, and Lucy can’t complain if it gives her an actual weekend to spend in bed. She will not have to do much pretending in order to sleep for most of it, but she can’t shake the feeling that she is being disastrously unproductive and continuing to squander their limited time. Are they sure they don’t want her to –

“Don’t worry about it,” Flynn says, sitting down on the bed next to her as Lucy is curled up drowsily among the pillows. “I’ll go back to Raleigh’s and ask a few more questions. Nothing obvious, of course. And if Gabriel would just cooperate and shake Kit down for a straight answer or two, that would help, but I clearly am asking for the moon there.”

Lucy is briefly tempted to make the usual queer-person crack about how neither Gabriel or Kit could give anyone a straight answer to anything if their life depended on it, but she really is exhausted, and manages a sort of strangled-duck snort instead. She still feels compelled to apologize for sticking him with all the extra work. “We could still go to Dee’s tomorrow. Or – I know we have to have an excuse for why we’re not if we don’t, but it feels unfair if I just get to lounge in bed and you have to be out working on this by yourself, I should – ”

“No,” Flynn says firmly, catching her hand and kissing it. “I’m a very old immortal, I can go much longer without proper sleep or rest, and I’m worried about you. You’ve been running on the edge of a breakdown for days, and you have been doing the most that anyone possibly could. You deserve this chance to catch up on some sleep and not worry about what the hell the rest of us are doing. I’ll get what I can out of Raleigh, but – ”

“Of course I’m going to worry about what the hell you’re doing.” Lucy looks down at their hands, interlinked atop the covers. “It comes of being in love with you.”

There’s a sudden and very significant pause. Lucy bites her tongue; she’s never actually said it out loud yet, and what with all his panicking earlier, she suddenly isn’t sure if she should have. Flynn calls her _moja ljubav,_ my love, and it’s not as if she doesn’t think he feels the same way, but saying things out loud, fixing them in place, taking a leap and holding your heart out to someone is always completely terrifying, and they’ve been making it work with the same M.O. as everyone else: do whatever you want, be whoever you are, but don’t say it out loud. It’s the same flimsy paper tiger that protects the creatures from the persecutions and prosecutions that Elizabeth would otherwise be bound to enforce if she had tangible proof of what they were. No matter how gifted and gentle and generous Asher de Clermont is, a grownup actually able to talk about difficult subjects like emotions, none of his sons appear to have inherited that talent, and Gabriel at least appears fully set to put all his feelings right here and then die, literally. Lucy looks up at Flynn, once more willing to apologize or walk it back down or pretend it wasn’t that, since she has so rarely felt herself worthy of anything she wants. “That is – I just – I mean, I’m obviously going to – ”

Flynn cuts her off by leaning down and kissing her thoroughly, and Lucy sighs into his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I love you too,” he says, with a shocking amount of eloquence and emotional clarity for Garcia Flynn de Clermont, when they pull back. It’s as if he will struggle and swamp around in his self-inflicted morass all he wants (and believe her, he does that a lot), but he’s definitely not going to make her feel unworthy or unwanted, especially after his freakout. “And I want to do this and let you rest. Okay?”

“O – okay.” Lucy’s voice trembles a little, because she’s just not used to it, the fierce and clumsy and deeply tender devotion that he pours on her, and she is so afraid of losing it in any number of ways. She pets her fingers through his hair. “Come to bed with me, Garcia.”

Flynn gets up, changes, and does so, scooping her once more into his arms so she can nuzzle her nose in the hollow of his collarbone. She has found that after all his initial awkwardness and standoffish nature, physically pushing or dodging away from her on multiple occasions, he really is a very tactile and loving partner, and definitely a bit of a cuddler. She rubs her hand on the solid barrel of his chest, trying to let herself accept both the nearness of his presence and the permission to be kind to herself, to let go, to rest. Eyes closed, she murmurs, “Are you sure I shouldn’t – ”

“Mmm.” Flynn puts a heavy arm over her back. “No.”

Lucy thinks about protesting, but she can’t. Instead she does as ordered, and sleeps.

She wakes up late the next morning, after Flynn is gone, and spends Friday in bed, being waited on hand and foot. It’s clear that the servants have their own suspicions about why the mistress is feeling rather tired and not the thing, and Lucy is not going to explain to every one of them individually that no, she is not in the family way. She hopes they might get the point by inference when Lady Beaton arrives to pay a call, bringing the promised charm. Lucy is supposed to wear it at least an hour before engaging in congress with her husband and say the accompanying incantation, written in tiny, fine letters on a thin onionskin scroll. It smells strongly of garlic, and she wonders if the majority of its efficacy comes from handily keeping all nearby vampires out of impregnating distance. (It doesn’t repel them, but it does make them sneeze, unfortunately for any aspirations of becoming a great Italian chef.) But as she squints at the elaborate writing, she looks up with a start. “This is Voynich hand.”

“It’s what?” Lady Beaton blinks. “Ye mean witch-script? What else should it be?”

“It’s just, I’ve only ever seen one surviving example of this in my time.” Lucy sits bolt upright, feeling the scholar’s manic thrill of a vindicated hypothesis. She proposed to Flynn all the way back in Sept-Tours that the unusual, nigh-unreadable, highly abbreviated Latin cipher of the Voynich manuscript was developed as a specially feminized secret version, used particularly among witches and lost to the interpretations of countless baffled human cryptographers. “Do all witches use this to write down their medicines and charms and spells?”

“Some o’ the literate ones, aye,” Lady Beaton says. “There are plenty of others who canna read and write, who ken it all in their head. But you’ll find some knowledge of it among most witches. It was taught us this way since Hypatia and Hildegard.”

Lucy wonders with great interest if this is referring to Hypatia of Alexandria and Hildegard of Bingen, from the fifth and twelfth centuries respectively. Hildegard was a towering genius, nun, polymath, mystic, composer, natural scientist and pioneer of medicine, advisor of kings and popes, and Lucy has no trouble seeing her as the medieval editor and refiner of whatever late-antique Latin code the brilliant mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher Hypatia originally devised. It’s not that surprising that Hypatia was a witch, as she was infamously murdered by a Christian mob, and though it was destroyed hundreds of years before her time, the Library of Alexandria contained countless irreplaceable ancient magical texts. Hildegard, by contrast, lived a long and sedate life in the safety of her German cloister and died at the venerable age of eighty-one, and she was known for (among countless other things) her constructed language, the _Lingua Ignota,_ the unknown and secret cipher that nobody besides her could read. Of course she worked on the Voynich cipher too. This information profoundly delights Lucy to a nearly sexual degree. She loves amazing historical women so much.

“Ye really don’t ken much of witches, do ye?” Lady Beaton remarks. “Everything I teach ye comes as such a revelation. What was your mother like, that she didna?”

“My mother… died.” Lucy looks down. “When I was young. I have letters from her, and a few other things, and I discovered before I left my own time that she found some of the – well, she knew some things about my future, if not as much as she thought. I never embraced it growing up, and all the non-family witches I met, with very few exceptions, were power-hungry and manipulative. Like I told you, my own parents spellbound me, and I still don’t understand why. Supposedly it was to protect me, but I’ve never been able to just _ask_ them.”

“Ye could,” Lady Beaton points out. “Ye have the timewalking gift. Ye could go to some other time and place where they still live, and do it.”

Lucy is very startled. She has never thought of it that way, since her command of this ability is still so new and was quickly put to this particular use, and the idea of just popping back a few years and finding her actual flesh-and-blood parents that she only has dim and fragmented memories of…. she doesn’t know. Part of her wants to, wants it more than anything, but if nothing else, this excursion has taught her the dangers of meddling in her own family’s past/future. Flynn is juggling so many balls with the need to both preserve and try so desperately to change what happens to his, and if grownup Lucy goes back and confronts her parents for something they may have not yet even done to child-her, is that what makes them do it? Her head is knotted up with the impossible ramifications of all this, and part of her doesn’t know if she does really want those answers. What is it going to change, what is it going to heal? Even if she goes back to them, they will still be dead in the present. Does she _want_ them to feel justified in what they’ve done, or die with the guilt?

“Something to think on, ‘tis all,” Lady Beaton advises, seeing the blue screen of death expression that must have taken over Lucy’s face. “I’m sorry to hear ye’ve been taken ill, my lady, though it has been a trial, these past few days. I hope we didna overwork ye, in Essex.”

“No, just… exhaustion.” Lucy musters a smile, since that if nothing else is the absolute truth. “I’ll mend.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Lady Beaton rises to her feet. “I have taken a liking to ye, and if it’s what ye want, that charm indeed should keep ye from getting a bairn unasked. I still say that husband o’ yours is an utter lummox, and the least use ye could get from him is handsome children, but it is your own weal, my lady. Is it all, or shall I be off?”

“I…” Lucy hesitates. The whole purpose of their delay with Dee was to play things carefully and close to the vest, but she can’t help it. “Did you read my journal? In Essex?”

“Your journal?” Lady Beaton looks blank. Samuel Pepys, the prolific diarist, will record every detail of his life in the mid-seventeenth century, and there is some practice of keeping a day book or other volume of private and moral thoughts, at least among the nobility, but the idea isn’t yet universally known or widespread. “Your volume o’ accounts, or your leechbook, ye mean?”

“I… no, never mind.” Lucy shakes her head. “Thank you for the call, and the charm. I will hope to see you when I am feeling more myself.”

Lady Beaton nods and sweeps out of the bedchamber, as Lucy wonders if she next wants to ask Agnes. The old witch has been helpful about providing potions and poultices for the supposed infirmity, and it is clear that she absolutely dotes on Christian, who follows her around like a golden retriever eager to be helpful at all possible moments. No venerable Scottish lady will suffer from lack of politeness under this roof while _he_ is here, no sirree bob, and Agnes treats him like a favorite grandson. Even if she doesn’t trust Lucy herself, especially after the scene with Amelie that might well have driven her to read the journal in search of a little more solid proof of what she’s dealing with, she’s not going to do anything that might get him hurt. That seems to be the one thing on which the lot of them, no matter their species or political inclination, can agree. Of course, it’s all the more bitterly and unbearably ironic that in the end, none of their efforts will matter a damn.

Lucy looks down at the charm, wonders if duly donning it, reading the incantation, and engaging in vaguely garlic-smelling coitus will in fact do the trick, and is surprised from this contemplation by the arrival of Meg, who has come to deliver the backup options. Lucy knows that you shouldn’t mess with herbal abortifacients, especially as someone who has no idea what she’s doing with them, and she would obviously prefer to be proactive rather than reactive. Meg has a small sponge, which is to be soaked with tansy oil and put up inside her like a diaphragm, or she can recommend the old pull-out method, though she does admit that her sister got with her youngest lass while attempting this. There is also a foul concoction made of something like powdered dung, stewed flowers, crushed beetles, boiled wine, and God knows what that Lucy is not drinking under any circumstances, no matter how much Meg swears by it. Fascinating (and slightly horrifying) as this tour through early modern gynecological medicine has been, it looks like the charm may in fact be her best bet. Great.

Lucy is interrupted once more by Christian, who is clearly certain that her present situation is somehow his fault, and he is so apologetic that Lucy nearly tells him that it’s fine, she’s just shamming. But Christian, bless his heart, might blurt it out inadvertently, and they need to be convincing for any of this to work. He is sent on his way, and Lucy lies down again and naps like a total slug for the rest of the afternoon, which is wonderfully refreshing. She is just wondering if she should be really decadent and ask Parry to send up her supper in bed, though he’s still recovering from that nasty crack on the head and shouldn’t be on his feet, when the door opens an inch. Flynn’s voice says, “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” Lucy sits up, yawning, as he makes his way into the bedchamber and closes the door behind him. “Did you find anything?”

“I went to visit Sir Walter this morning,” Flynn says. “Made sure that none of the other members of the School were there, and asked him about anything he might know in regard to any unexplained deaths of an unusual sort. I was clear that I was, of course, not accusing him of anything, and that it was entirely connected to our present scientific enquiry. With my wife having unfortunately fallen ill and the necessary postponement of our audience with Dr. Dee, which we would be humbled if he could rearrange – so on and so forth.”

“And?” Lucy asks. “Did he buy it?”

“I don’t think he killed Henry de Prestyn, no,” Flynn says, sounding relieved. “He did admit that he heard of a strange incident in the city late last year, and soon after that, Dr. Dee returned from Prague and completed the great alchemical manuscript he had been working on for years at Emperor Rudolf’s court. Further questioning led him to say that he suspected that incident was connected to the opportune completion of the work, but he had no idea how.”

“What incident?” Lucy looks at him anxiously. “What did he say? And Dee _finished_ – so he definitely wrote it, and it’s Ashmole 782?”

“It looks like he did, yes,” Flynn says. “But Sir Walter had heard of strange and sundry folk who helped him with it, folk he never met directly or was able to see with his own eyes whenever he called upon Dr. Dee. He thought they might be fairy-servants, fanciful as it sounded, but I had another idea.”

“Timewalkers.” Lucy sits back. “Ashmole 782 is supposed to be about creature origins, right? Contain all the secrets to their magic and their powers? Dee’s human, as far as we know, so he couldn’t write that himself. But he clearly knows enough to be able to get in touch with those who could help him, and get them to drop in for consultations. Timewalkers have to be witches, right? Daemons’ magic works differently, so – was it _only_ witches?”

“I don’t know,” Flynn says. “It sounds as if he was casting his net as wide as he could, and after all, the rules against creature miscegenation don’t apply right now. Witches could have vampire and daemon acquaintances to bring along without suspicion.”

“What about this incident?” Lucy presses. “Did he say what it was?”

Flynn flashes a grim smile. “All he knew was that it involved some kind of fight in a disreputable part of the city, he wasn’t sure where. Apparently it was quickly hushed up. And you’ll never guess the two people who _might_ know more about it.”

“I’m guessing one of them is Kit,” Lucy says with a sigh. “And the other?”

“Hubbard,” Flynn says. “Naturally. So we have to convince either the jealous daemon who’s sleeping with my brother, or the paranoid vampire who hates our guts, to say something, and Marlowe has been with us at the School of Night the whole time. He knows what we’re after, and it has pleased him not to say a single word. He doesn’t want us to find it.”

Lucy takes that in with disappointment but not surprise. “Is there any chance of asking Gabriel to get him to talk?”

“You think so?” Flynn laughs bitterly. “Those two are up to their ears in whatever plot they have going on just to spite me, and Marlowe’s a spy and a double agent and a creature and an atheist _and_ a sodomite all at once, in a world that would hang him on the spot for any one of those things. Keeping dangerous secrets under lock and key is his bread and butter, and we could torture him for days – not that I want to – without getting a single squeak from him. He doesn’t want to do favors for me, and he _might_ tell Gabriel, but he doesn’t really trust him either. We have no leverage on Marlowe except for threatening to report him to the authorities, which I already did, and that blew up in my face. And we already know how impossible it is that Hubbard will cooperate with us under any circumstances.”

“Shit.” This is definitely a problem, and Lucy frowns in hope of a sudden and clever solution. Her next question does not need to throw extra kindling on the blaze, possibly literally, but bears asking anyway. “What about Guy Fawkes? Did you get in contact with him?”

“I sent him a message suggesting that we discuss folk of our possibly mutual acquaintance, from the north.” Flynn grimaces. “Hopefully he’ll read between the lines and guess that I mean fellow creatures, though maybe he’ll decide it’s a plot to blow up something else. That, or – ” He sniffs, frowns, looks around, then sneezes. “What the hell is that thing?”

“Our guarantee against involuntary parenthood, according to Lady Beaton.” Lucy dangles the charm, which Flynn regards with an expression of mild revulsion. “I wear it and say an incantation an hour before we, uh, get busy. Apparently. Between this and the dung beetle juice, I think this is the best option.”

Flynn looks her up and down, as if to say that she is lucky he loves her enough to still get busy even if scenting strongly of garlic, but decides not to question her judgment. He coughs in a somewhat significant fashion, then sits down on the bed, clearly deep in thought. It’s clear that between the choice of Marlowe or Hubbard as potential sources of information, they are equally inhospitable, but there might be slightly more of a chance with the former. If Kit knows they’re asking directly, would that help or hurt? He can hardly get more close-mouthed and untrustworthy, but at least he and Flynn were friends once. Hubbard, not so much.

Lucy keeps up the pretense for the rest of the evening, though the food that Elizabethans think invalids should eat is some bland pabulum that she can barely choke down. However, her plans to productively malinger the weekend away hit a major snag on Saturday morning, by dint of an unexpected summons from the Queen. Unless you are actively dying of plague on the instant, you can’t turn down a royal invitation, and given all the association with traitors (present or future) that she has been doing recently, it causes Lucy’s heart to skip an uneasy beat. She has to get up, assure the servants that she feels somewhat recovered, truly, and gets washed, dressed, and decked out for visiting. This requires a return to the stiff padded dress, scratchy lace ruff, teased-up hair, and full-face makeup that she despises so much, and as she rattles up the drive to Whitehall in the carriage, she hopes that Elizabeth will be quick. Though that is usually not the case where monarchs are involved. What does she want? Did Kit just go ahead and spill the beans anyway? Or –

When Lucy is announced and curtsies herself deeply into the royal receiving chamber, she finds Elizabeth in a fractious, crotchety mood, eating absently from a box of candied violets and shouting at the poor young page who has apparently brought the wrong box of state papers for her perusal. At the sight of Lucy, she glances up. “Lady Clairmont, thou hast made a speedy appearance. I had heard that thou wert sick in bed, and that was the reason thee and thy troublesome husband could not wait upon Dr. Dee?”

Lucy grimaces, as that is a clear indication that Elizabeth knows that it was cancelled, and might have more questions as to why. “I am feeling… much restored by the prospect of your company, Your Majesty.”

Elizabeth snorts, but does not immediately decry this careful flattery. She eats another candied violet, dismisses the page with a withering look, and gets to her feet. “I suffocate in this filthy closet. Some air, I think. Wilt thou accompany me?”

This is, of course, a purely rhetorical question, and before long, they are up on the windy wallwalks of Whitehall, guardsman standing every few dozen yards and hastening to bow or kneel when they see the Queen coming. Elizabeth links her arm with Lucy’s, wrinkling her nose as the direction of the breeze changes and they get a full-force whiff of the Thames in the summertime – well, it seventy percent counts as heat. “How art thou settling into London, Lady Clairmont? I hear thou hast made a good tour of society?”

“Tolerably well, Your Majesty,” Lucy says. “Everyone has been most gracious.”

“That surprises me to hear,” Elizabeth says cynically. “They are all swine in silk, and all of them want more and more from me, as a blind piglet rootles at its mother’s teat. But Sir Walter did you such courtesy in arranging for the audience with Dr. Dee. What reason for it being so ungently forgotten?”

“We…” Lucy really isn’t sure how much she can say about this, if she decorously has to pretend the supernatural world does not exist. Raleigh is still high in favor at court, so she can’t go openly accusing him of potential involvement in a murder mystery. Can she get Elizabeth to order Marlowe to talk? “We had some other questions we wished to ask first, Your Majesty.”

“Questions?” Elizabeth stops short, causing Lucy to do the same, and turns sharply on her. “Questions to be asked of Lady Mary Beaton, perhaps?”

Oh, hell. Lucy tries to keep her face blank, refuse to give any instant or unambiguous evidence of guilt. “To what does Your Majesty refer?”

“Do not play the simpleton with me, Lady Clairmont.” Elizabeth’s eyes flare. “Thou knowest full well to whom I refer. My cousin Mary’s old attendant, a woman of great – standing in certain circles of society. Perhaps it is my fault, for continuing to allow her to reside in the city when I should have thrown her out. I am told thou hast been seeing her.”

Lucy obviously very much has been seeing her, but she doesn’t know if it would make a damn bit of difference if it’s not for potential treasonous political reasons, but to study magic. Did Kit let something slip? He must have, but why now? “If I have displeased Your Majesty, I am most abjectly sorry, but I do not – ”

Elizabeth looks as if she can’t decide whether to just push Lucy off the wall now and make it look like an accident, or shout for her guards and have her clapped into the Tower. But then, most unexpectedly, her mood turns again, and she lets out a world-weary sigh. “It is most drear and troublesome when men pit women the one against the other, is it not? I never wanted to kill my cousin. I held off on signing the death warrant so long as I could. But she had become intolerable – intolerable! – to the safety of my realm, Lady Clairmont, and I am no mother in body, but I am and have always vowed to be the mother of my people. The threats and plots and evil men that clustered about her, the Catholic strings upon which they wished to make her dance – I would have killed those men first, were it in my power, and not my cousin. Hast thou had any doing with that breed of plot?”

“No,” Lucy says as stoutly as she can. It is an outright lie, given the deeply regrettable presence of Guy Fawkes in her life, but there you have it. “My husband and I are Your Majesty’s most loyal subjects.”

Elizabeth snorts again. “Thou dost fib passing well, at least. So you will claim that thou hast never discussed matters of a political nature with Lady Beaton, nor supported any plans for my removal from mine own rightful throne?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Lucy says, with some relief. “Never.”

The queen considers that, her heavily rouged face impenetrable. Then she says abruptly, “Perhaps this can be of use to me still. Thy husband is in my own personal service, why should thou not be? If you are to continue associating with the lady, thou shalt convey to me all that is said and done, and anything else that it is meet for me to know. Aye?”

“Your Majesty – ” Once again, you can’t really argue with Elizabeth. Lucy can’t tell her that she doesn’t want to spy on Lady Beaton and report on her to the government, since that is entirely beside the point. She can’t drop her like a hot potato either, but just as Flynn, Gabriel, and Asher have to hold off on attacking Hubbard’s hive even though they know Rittenhouse is there, if Lucy was to be discovered spying on a fellow witch for the English crown, it would have major ramifications for mortal politics. It could spark an aggrieved Lady Beaton into exploring avenues for active treason, it could get Guy Fawkes going fifteen years ahead of schedule, and Lucy really does not want piss off the only witch outside of Denise and Michelle with whom she has ever achieved some measure of trust, especially when she has such a fraught relationship with mother figures to start with. “I would not – ”

“The choice is simple, Lady Clairmont.” Elizabeth looks at her narrowly. “Thou dost agree to report all there is to know of her to me, or thou dost not see her again. If thou sayest so and then I am to catch thee in a lie, I will have thee thrown into the Tower.”

Lucy’s mouth remains open, as she can’t think what to say. Finally, she can only manage some weak platitude about how she remains at Her Majesty’s complete devotion, and she will do as bidden. If she and Lady Beaton can keep the conversation off politics, and she is not allowed to officially talk about or hint at magic, maybe there won’t be much to report anyway, but Lucy is under no illusions as to how Lady Beaton would take this if she ever found out. At her agreement, Elizabeth seems somewhat pleased. “I miss Walsingham,” she says. “Mine own master of whispers, who always saw I was well fettled with information for the defense of my realm and people. When thee and thy husband go to see Dr. Dee, now that thou art…. recovered from thy infirmity, ask him of his old student, Edward Kelley. England’s coffers are sore depleted from all the wars with Spain, and if there is any use in the alchemical art, he must use it to produce gold for us. I have heard Kelley is now court alchemist to Emperor Rudolf himself.”

“Your Majesty – ” Lucy isn’t sure whether to warn Elizabeth directly off Edward Kelley, who is a noted and flamboyantly fraudulent charlatan. His relationship with Dee has gone sour over those rumors of wife-sharing and other less savory things, and Kelley remained behind in Prague when Dee returned to England with his reputation in tatters. Besides, alchemy doesn’t, you know, actually work. “Kelley will… not be of great use to you, I fear.”

Elizabeth surveys her, decides that the answer to how she knows that might fall under something they can’t talk about, and sniffs dismissively. “Do it nonetheless. That is mine own order, Lady Clairmont. Is it understood?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Lucy can do nothing but trail in Elizabeth’s wake like a balloon blowing on a string, as they reach the end of the wallwalk and descend back into the main precincts of the palace, still subject to a wave of bows or curtsies as the queen sweeps autocratically past. Since this has already gone about as badly as it possibly can, there’s no harm in one final shot in the dark. “Does Your Majesty know anything of an… incident that happened in the city, late last year, shortly before Dr. Dee returned to England?”

“There are many incidents in this city.” Elizabeth cocks a plucked and penciled eyebrow. “Am I supposed to have ken of the doings of all the thieves and wastrels?”

“No, Your Majesty, but this…” Lucy fishes for the most delicate way to put it. “I am told that Christopher Marlowe may know something of it?”

“I would be surprised if he does not,” Elizabeth says darkly. “That man has his fingers in places where God Almighty never intended that they be put, and by the whispers, it is in more than one heathenish manner. What mean you by it?”

“If I am to help Your Majesty with Lady Beaton, perhaps in return you could… grant me an official sanction to question Master Marlowe?” Lucy is somewhat shocked at her own nerve, and hopes this counts as clever political manipulation and not dangerous and unjustified presumption. “I know he is a useful servant to you, Your Majesty, but he does keep his own counsel very close, and if I was to know more of this affair, it would ensure that there were no… irregularities. With what happened, or afterward.”

Elizabeth surveys her inscrutably. She is too good at this courtly game, favors given for favors paid, to openly let on which way she might be leaning, but Lucy thinks – _thinks_ – she’s slightly impressed.  “Is it of great import?”

“To speak frankly, Your Majesty. It is.”

“Very well,” Elizabeth decides shortly. “Thou wilt have my permission, if thou applies thyself to the chancellery and asks for a warrant. Thou art to speak to him of this matter only, and none other. Is that most clear?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” If Kit is indeed a spy for the crown, Elizabeth wouldn’t want either of them running off too freely at the mouth about classified state secrets. “May we go now?”

Elizabeth has better things to do than stand around waiting for clerks to draw up papers, but she gives Lucy a ring to take down as proof that the request has royal authorization, and with a kiss of the Queen’s powdered white hand, the audience is at an end. Lucy goes to the chancellery and waits until she is issued with her subpoena to serve on Kit. He is not going to be pleased about this, but he also can’t easily refuse, and at least Lucy has procured actual, tangible leverage, of which she cannot help but be proud. Once she leaves Whitehall and gets back into the carriage, the footmen asks if they should make for the Old Lodge, and Lucy shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Take me to Master Marlowe’s.”

The footmen are surprised, but do as ordered. The carriage rattles and bumps along, taking ages to cross London Bridge due to the ever-present cow traffic jam, and though it’s not far from Whitehall to where Kit keeps his apartments in the Southwark theater district, it takes close to two hours. This is not a neighborhood where a lady of quality visits often, much less alone, and Lucy can see heads turning as the carriage trundles through the narrow, labyrinthine streets. They finally pull up outside a wattle-and-daub timbered house, the ground floor of which appears to be a combination winesink and brothel, and Lucy suspects that her reputation might be ruined if she walks in the front door. A footmen is dispatched around the back to ascertain if Master Marlowe is at home and in any state to receive company, and after several minutes, he returns. “This way, my lady, and keep your hood up.”

Lucy is amused at all this literal cloak-and-dagger melodrama, as it seems appropriate to pay a visit on a poet, and follows him around, through a low door on a stoop crowded with squabbling chickens, and up the stairs. Marlowe’s apartment is at the top, and the footman knocks loudly. There is a very long pause, as if Kit is judging if he can possibly get away with pretending he’s not in. Then he calls through the door, “Enter.”

Lucy gives the footman a look, and he understands that he is supposed to remain out here and pretend he is part of the woodwork. She lifts the latch, takes a deep breath, and lets herself in.

Marlowe’s lodgings are small, steep-roofed, smell distinctly of wine and tobacco, and every vaguely flat surface is crowded with penknives, inkwells, tattered quills, crossed-over drafts, spare parchment, important papers, dog-eared books, griping letters from creditors and tavern-owners wondering where their money is, half-bound quires, and the other detritus of a brilliant and mercurial playwright who really does not care who he might piss off. The playwright himself is installed at a crammed desk in the middle of the chaos, squinting at some woodcut in an open book that appears to depict the devil eating sinners. He looks up at Lucy’s entrance, joggling the wine goblet helpfully at hand to aid his creativity (it’s probably a good thing they haven’t yet invented absinthe?) and his face goes very deliberately and unrevealingly blank. “Lady Clairmont. Surely this can be no fit place for you to pay a call?”

“Possibly not.” Lucy stands just inside the door, wondering if she can summon her firedragon familiar to defend her if Marlowe does anything intemperate. She doesn’t think so, but she can’t be sure. At least Gabriel isn’t there, apparently commencing indecencies with one of his many, many other paramours, and she glances at the book. “Have I interrupted you?”

They both know she’s asking this for the sake of form, rather than as any sort of apology, but Marlowe gives a tiny shrug and decides to answer. “I am thinking of a new play, my lady, and was merely jotting down ideas. A tragedy, about a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for immortal life and endless knowledge. It, of course, ends most badly for him, as it commonly does in any commerce with immortals who are also the devil. Is there any semblance you would see to that, my lady, with the situation in which I have found myself?”

Lucy feels her mouth open, and manages to shut it before she can gape too indecorously. “Is that how ill-used you feel yourself, then?”

Kit shrugs. “And if it was?”

“I am…” Lucy isn’t sure if she should offer some sort of insincere, canned apology when she’s literally about to whip out the queen’s warrant on him. “I thought that you have made things over with Gabriel, at least?”

Kit’s mouth twists. He takes a long drink from the wine goblet, pushes his chair back, and gets to his feet, eyeing her warily. “My doings with Lord de Clermont are my own. Unless you wished to apply for a share? He is most _generous_ in his sharing, sweet Gabriel.”

“No, not in the least.” They don’t need to add jealousy twice over to Marlowe’s various reasons to hate her, anyway. Lucy wonders if she can get him to talk without the warrant, rather than going for that as an opening move. “I had something to ask you.”

“Did you?” Marlowe makes a faux-gracious gesture, as if inviting her to have a seat anywhere she can find a spot. “Please, my lady, at your leisure.”

Lucy hesitates, then perches on the edge of a stool, having cleaned off several tavern bills first. Marlowe remains standing, and she can sense his tension. Daemons don’t have the same kind of magic as witches, as she noted to Flynn, but they can do strange things when under pressure, they have foresight and heightened reflexes and sixth senses and other extra-natural understandings and abilities, and she does not want this to devolve into an ugly magical slugfest for any number of reasons. She takes a deep breath. “I was wondering what you knew about an incident late last year, somewhere in the city.”

“I know of many incidents,” Kit says flippantly, just like Elizabeth. “Which one, my dear?”

This is an unacceptably familiar and disrespectful way to refer to a noble lady who is several degrees his social better, and Lucy wonders if she should let it slide in the name of amicable relations, or if Kit is once more seeing how far he can push her. She settles for raising a cutting eyebrow at him, and he says, “My apologies, Lady Clairmont. Which incident?”

“I don’t know many details. Sir Walter told Garcia about it, and you’re both affiliated with the School of Night.” Lucy remembers too late that they don’t actually use that name for themselves, but Kit seems to appreciate the dramatic nature of it. He would. “Soon after, Dr. Dee finished an alchemical manuscript he had been working on, and Raleigh seemed to think the two things might be connected. It involved a fight in a suspect quarter of the city.”

She is watching Kit’s face very closely as she says this, and something flickers in his eyes, even as his expression remains otherwise impassive. After a pause he says, “And I resemble the sort of churl to take part in such fiendish recreations, do I?”

Lucy raises the other eyebrow at him, as if to say that they both know he does, and he makes a small _point taken_ gesture. “What am I supposed to know of this?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“And why should I do that, Lady Clairmont?”

“To help Garcia and myself?” Lucy’s pretty sure that’s going to be a failure on launch, but she wanted to try it anyway. “To solve a most… vexing question of magic and alchemy?”

Kit considers, tapping his elegant fingers on his arm. “And?”

“It may have involved a man from Essex,” Lucy says, as baldly as she can. “Henry de Prestyn.”

That definitely gets a reaction, which Kit isn’t quite quick enough to keep off his face. He and she can both tell that she knows he knows, but he still feigns an artful disinterest. “Perhaps I have heard the name. What of it?”

“If you know something about it,” Lucy says, “I truly must know, Kit. I know you do not trust me, or us, and Garcia has not – he regrets how he dealt with you in Clerkenwell. But this is beyond that, or anything else. This is about the fate of all creatures, and it – with Gabriel, where we’ve come from. It affects him too, it could help save him. I just – please.”

Kit considers that. Then he says, “I am sorry. I recall nothing.”

“Do you?” Lucy doesn’t want to do this, but she’s edging toward having to. “Would that be your answer to a judge or jury, Master Marlowe?’

“Do you intend to place me before one? Your dear husband, as he apparently told you, already made that offer.”

“No, but…” Lucy hesitates a final moment, then reaches into her bodice and pulls out the royal warrant. “Her Majesty, whom we both serve, has commanded that you do so.”

Marlowe looks as blindsided as he did when he first realized who Lucy was, back in the Rose courtyard, and just about as pleased. He thrusts out a hand as if expecting Lucy to personally pass the warrant to him for inspection, and she reflexively does so, not certain that he isn’t going to tear it up and pretend it never existed. But he reads it through, his scowl deepening the whole time, and then looks up at her with an expression more loathing than ever. Yet there’s something else as well, something close to genuine fear, as if this is tugging at the threads of something he has tried with all his prodigious skill to wall up and hide away. “Well,” he says at last, breaking the nauseous silence. “You seem to have grown a set of lovely claws, darling. Garcia would settle for no less, I suppose.”

Lucy clears her throat, but this time he does not amend himself with her proper title. He obviously cannot disobey a direct order from the Queen, but she can still see him trying to think of a way around it. “Very well,” he says. “It was in November of the last year, the night of All Souls as I recall. I was out for revels with companions, and I met a man in one of the lower districts of the city, whose clothes and manner of speech were strange to me. He gave his name as Henry de Prestyn from Essex, as you say, and was in search of a – well, nay mind that. I mistrusted him, and said so. Matters and tempers alike became inflamed. And with that – ” Kit manages a rather pale version of his trademark careless shrug – “I had out my rapier and did him to death in a ditch.”

Lucy covers her mouth, fighting shock, even though this is not at all out of character for Kit. She has been picturing Henry de Prestyn solemnly slaughtered in some deliberate satanic ritual, then skinned and made into a book. But if he was killed in some no-account brawl in a seedy section of the city, upon running into a hot-tempered and suspicious-minded Kit Marlowe, and then collected by someone who recognized his extraordinary creature status… is that better or worse? Apparently Henry didn’t think to disguise himself or change his clothes and mannerisms when traveling from the seventeenth century to the sixteenth, and caught attention, but… what was he in search of? Can this really be the whole truth? How did Kit avoid a murder charge, if so? Was it just that nobody cared about a foreigner with no home or name or obvious background, that he got away scot-free, that Elizabeth granted him diplomatic immunity to keep him working as a spy, or – ?

“Are you…” Lucy doesn’t know what exactly about this story she doesn’t believe, but it’s something. “Are you sure that’s all of what happened?”

“God’s truth, as I trow.” Kit makes an elegantly sarcastic cross over his heart. “It is so.”

Lucy looks him up and down. “And then? You ran and left him there?”

“I did not want to be spotted having done murder in the streets, did I?” Kit points out, logically enough. “I know not of what became of him afterward, though aye, Dr. Dee did finish his book before Christmas. If Sir Walter thinks the two of some relation, that is of his own intelligence, naught to do with me. Why should they have the least connection?”

It’s true that on the surface, these two events do not appear in the least related – except for the fact that Henry de Prestyn’s corpse was then skinned and his hide made into magical vellum, which Dee could have purchased at a good price for his great alchemical treatise. Lucy still does not have any proof of this gruesome quarter of the theory, and if Kit had nothing to do with the body after the intemperate deed was done… it is all _plausible._ It could even explain why he doesn’t want to talk about it, if he doesn’t want a murder charge getting dug up and used against him by his enemies, whether theatrical or political. But the more she looks at him, the more Lucy becomes convinced that he’s lying. He didn’t kill Henry de Prestyn, but he knows who did, possibly witnessed the event, and he’s covering for them. But _why?_

“Well?” Kit says challengingly, as if sensing her disbelief. “Dost thou wish to cross-examine me before the Inns of Court, sweetheart?”

Combined with the informal “thou” that is the social superior’s place to use, and the mocking endearment, this is practically as insulting as if he’s challenged her to a duel on the spot. Lucy bites her tongue, troubled. If _Flynn_ killed Henry de Prestyn, surely he’d remember, and they wouldn’t have to go through this tiresome runaround of trying to pry it out of Marlowe. Once again, the inescapable question of Kit’s real loyalties rears its ugly head. Who the hell would he have enough devotion to in order to take the fall for a very serious crime, when he has been concerned about nobody except himself? Selfless behavior is not, to say the least, his modus operandi. Yet right now, he very much wants Lucy to believe that it was him, even if it gives her the power to leave right now and tell someone. What the…?

Lucy and Kit look at each other, until finally, she inclines her head in silent admission of a stalemate. Jesus, Marlowe is good at this. She walked in here with an actual warrant from the Queen, and she’s still not going to walk out with the full story, not unless she wants to make a messy public spectacle of it – which Kit knows as well as she does that she can’t. She is constrained by the need to keep the creature world officially secret, not to upset the delicate balance of power between Elizabeth’s human and supernatural subjects. No wonder he is so valuable as an agent for the crown, and such a dangerous enemy, if it is indeed them that he has set his will against. Should Gabriel really be sleeping with this guy? Not that he’s an amateur at this, but Kit could be subtly exploiting their mutual jealousy to dig for more information, all in the name of pillow talk and grand plans. A chill goes down Lucy’s spine, and she steps back. But before she does go, in the name of knowing exactly what she might be dealing with, laying all cards on the table, she says, “Did you tell Elizabeth about – about myself and Lady Beaton?”

Kit stares at her. “What?”

“Her Majesty had some… concerns about my choice of company.” Lucy tries to keep her voice level. “And if you… if you were trying… if you thought….”

“I may lack honor in any number of ways.” Kit’s gaze is hard and level, but not inherently deceitful, not in this. “But I did not tell anyone anything about you and the witch, no. I doubt you believe me, but – ”

“No, I…” Just as Lucy was sure he was lying when he told her that he killed Henry de Prestyn, she’s just as inexplicably convinced that he’s being truthful about this. It makes no sense at all, and he lifts his chin fiercely and dares her to insult him one more time. But she nods instead, awkwardly. “Good luck with _Dr. Fau –_ with your own work. I apologize for the interruption, and thank you for your time.”

And with that, she goes.

It’s another slow journey from Southwark to the Strand, and it is early evening by the time they roll muddily through the gates of the Old Lodge. As they enter the courtyard, Lucy spots Flynn and Asher in their shirtsleeves, leaning on their swords, as it is plain how they have spent the day: in intense sparring practice. She’s suddenly quite sorry she missed the spectacle, even as it seems to hint that they think doing so in good earnest might be called for soon, and it’s been several hundred years since Flynn wielded a sword in earnest. It might be like riding a bicycle, but it can’t hurt to brush up, and he hurries over to the carriage door to offer her a hand down. “There you are, I was starting to worry. Did Elizabeth keep you for the whole day, then?”

“I – no.” Lucy lowers her voice. “I’ll tell you later.”

She asks them to show her what they’ve been up to, just for the sheer and selfish delight of watching two extremely hot vampire men swordfight in open-necked white shirts at high speed (come on, _everyone_ would do the same), and once this exercise in thirst has been completed, goes to eat supper. She can feel Flynn watching her anxiously, and he follows her upstairs afterward, shutting the door. “What happened today? What took so long?”

Lucy sits down in one of the chairs, and he sits across from her. Then she informs him about what Elizabeth said, her amateur espionage mission on Marlowe, and the fact that she did get an answer while not getting an answer at all. Flynn’s dark brows furrow deeper and deeper, and he sits in silence, chewing this over. Then he says, “That was – that was brilliant of you, _moja ljubav,_ but – Jesus.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy says. “Do you think I shouldn’t have – ?”

“No.” Flynn looks at her with that expression he has always worn, even back in the initial tense, contested days of their early acquaintance, that makes her feel as if she is the most amazing person he has ever met in his very long life (and remember, he slept with Eleanor of Aquitaine, which Lucy herself judges as more impressive). “You’re so brave, and very clever, and I don’t know if even I would have been able to think that fast on my feet. But going to see Kit by yourself, when he admitted to killing your great-odd grandfather – even if he might have lying? Are you sure…?”

“He said he didn’t tattle about Lady Beaton.” Lucy’s throat closes at speaking the name. “And on that front, I actually believe him. Someone else must have told Elizabeth, maybe the same person who read my journal. I really don’t think it could have been Jack, this random grubby street child informing directly to the Queen, so I just… Garcia, I _hate_ to suggest this, but do you think Gabriel…?”

A muscle works in Flynn’s throat, and he glances away. “I don’t think so,” he says, as if willing it not to be true. “He came all the way to Essex with me to make sure you were safe, and – well, yes, he did say he wanted you dead, but – ”

“What?” Lucy jerks back. “He said _what?”_

“Only the first time Papa got here,” Flynn says hastily. “And he was drunk on daemon blood and we’d just had that fight at the brothel and with Kit, he was a mess. He threatened Hubbard on your behalf, remember, and he – he’s angry, but he wouldn’t hurt someone I love, he wouldn’t do that. Besides, he can’t implicate you and Lady Beaton without also incriminating himself, and I guarantee Gabriel has no love for Elizabeth’s bureaucracy and secret service. I’m not going to deny that he could still be trouble in other ways, but this – no. It’s not like him.”

Lucy takes that in, hoping he’s right. That whole casual “Gabriel wants me dead” curveball is something to be compartmentalized later, and she looks down at the table, even as Flynn reaches for her hand. Ever since he finally flipped the switch all the way from emotionally inept trash lord to soft devoted husband, he really has been good at it, bless him. “Lucy?”

“I’m fine.” She blows out an unsteady breath. “Do you have any thoughts on who might have really killed Henry, if Kit didn’t?”

“I have no idea.” Flynn frowns. “You said he was murdered on All Souls, 1589? That can’t possibly be a coincidence. Maybe it’s some sort of particularly powerful date for timewalkers – Halloween is when all places and times and worlds are closest, so it would make sense to travel then.”

“Where were you on All Souls, 1589?” Lucy doesn’t think it was him, obviously, but maybe he heard something. “Were you here in London?”

“As far as I know. But trust me, I would remember if I’d heard of anything like this.” Flynn taps the fingers of his free hand on the tabletop. “The plague was still in the city, people were careful of mingling and inordinately suspicious of strangers. Henry de Prestyn could have run afoul of some vigilante and gotten himself killed for bad planning, but what would he mean by traveling back to that year to start with? He would have been alive in 1589 already.”

“I don’t know.” Lucy rubs her face. “Do we have any kind of new date for Dee?”

“Sir Walter offered to escort us to Mortlake on Wednesday,” Flynn says. “I told him we would be happy to accept.”

“Okay.” Lucy forces a smile. “Sounds good.”

They spend the rest of the evening doing the household books together, as Flynn has volunteered to take them on while Parry is recovering, and finally get up and change for bed. As they crawl in, Flynn throws an odd look at the garlic amulet, which is still sitting on the sideboard, and Lucy can tell that he’s having some kind of deeply complicated reaction to it that goes well beyond the smell. She clears her throat, embarrassed. “Should I just put that in a drawer for now? I’m sure there have to be other charms. I can ask Lady Beat – ”

She stops, reminded that she can no longer ask Lady Beaton for anything without knowing she might have to report it, and she’ll try Agnes instead. “I mean,” she goes on hurriedly. “We do have to be responsible, and we discussed it, and – ”

“Yes, yes, we did.” Flynn harrumphs, eyes darting to the amulet and then away. “It’s just – knowing that it’s actually a possibility, I – I’ve spent centuries, _centuries,_ completely removed from the idea, of even thinking about it as something I could ever have again. What happened with Lorena and Iris – ”

It’s his turn to stop short, as Lucy looks at him, tender and sad. Flynn has never said a word about his human wife and daughter, who he lost all the way back in the year 540, not even a full century after the fall of Rome. Lucy saw their graves in the Sept-Tours church, the one Maria took her to for a pointed purpose, and learned that they died in a bandit attack on the return from a fair in Clermont, and that it was that grief that led Flynn to fling himself off the bell tower and be found dying by Maria, who made him a vampire to save his life. After that, he spent several centuries on a bloody and thorough campaign of vengeance and murder, and only returned to humanity when he got Gabriel to sire Christian, wanted to do it himself but did not feel ready in any sense of the word to be a father again. He has Jiya now, and he loves her just as much, but that too is fraught with complications, and Lucy reaches out, cupping Flynn’s drawn, shadowed, old-looking face in her hands. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“I lost myself after I lost them.” Flynn can’t quite meet her gaze. “It’s been almost fifteen hundred years, and I still remember how Iris looked how – when she – after. I have forgotten so many other details about them that they’re almost ghosts, but not that. My daughter, my child, my baby girl. I couldn’t save her, and it was never a thought that crossed my mind again. With Matej, we – we were both army men, so even if he had lived and we had mated, I don’t know if we would have decided to make blood children. It was not much his nature. Then Jiya, and I just… it was an instinct as great to sire her as it was to protect Iris, I knew I had to, and I did. But this is – this is different. And it _terrifies_ me.”

“I know.” Lucy strokes his face, his chin and cheek, the rough hint of stubble that appears every so often. “It scares me too. But not in the same way.”

“No.” Flynn looks away. “I used to sing to her, you know?” he goes on, with a slight break in his voice. “Iris. When she was falling asleep in my arms before the hearth in our hut, and after, long after, I had put her in the earth. I loved her so much. I still do. Nothing, no time or space or death or grief, has ever taken that away. The thought that I could ever do that again, that it could be that, that it could be _mine –_ Lucy, I just – all the things that I’ve done, all the blood I’ve stained my hands with, in any number of ways. I don’t know if I could be a real husband and father again, how I could bring that darkness into my home. I’ve spent fifteen hundred years as a vampire, and to inflict that on a baby, on a – ”

“Shhhh.” Lucy presses their foreheads together, cupping her hand on the back of his neck, as they sway silently, and she can feel him shaking. She presses light kisses to the side of his nose, the groove of his cheek, and tastes the salt. It’s understandable that Flynn, who had long ago given up the possibility of any more biological offspring, a new baby, is utterly, unspeakably terrified by the prospect. Lucy herself is, as she said, scared, but in different ways. At least the nice thing about growing up with Denise and Michelle was that she was never pressured to achieve any Cliché Heteronormative Standards of Life Success. Mark has gone through a string of girlfriends and a failed engagement and periodically has to rediscover himself, Olivia is an insanely driven career woman and has ventured that she may be ace, and Lucy has dated various decent but unexceptional men about whom she just didn’t feel deeply enough to really want to procreate. (And a couple lovely femmes and one memorable butch, but kids were less of a question with them.) In fact, one of the reasons she broke it off with Noah was because he really wanted the marriage and kids and white-picket-fence perfect suburban life, and she just didn’t. She’s thirty-four (or is it thirty-five? Her birthday is in January, it could have happened back home) and has focused on her academic and professional accomplishments, and she likes it that way. With everything that has gone on with her mother, her endlessly complicated feelings about Carol Preston and whatever she left Lucy with, it feels like it would be too much baggage to ever do it right.

Besides, Lucy is not nearly sentimental enough to view anything about pregnancy and childbirth as transformative or romantic or a magical female experience, and is not one of those women who have longed to be mothers their whole lives. Nobody wants to be one of those people with a screaming baby on an airplane or a toddler throwing a fit in the supermarket, and the prospect of very limited sleep for several years is not one to be ignored. But kids aren’t shrieking snotty hellbeasts forever. By the age of five or so, they’re pretty decent little people, and Lucy does love mentoring and engaging with her students. Being a parent is different, obviously, and it’s still not something she is racing to sign up for, but it’s a thought. There are still all the millennial concerns she has about not bringing a child into this horrible, broken, late-capitalist world that’s going to be destroyed by climate change and economic collapse in fifteen years, she only makes an academic’s salary, and everything else. Wouldn’t that be even more of a concern with a child who could live much longer than the average human? What kind of future is that?

“Shh,” Lucy says again, to herself as much to Flynn, as she strokes his back. He’s not crying, exactly, but he leans on her as if all the strength has run out of him, and she has to hold him up. “Garcia, it’s all right, it’s all right. It’s just us, it’s just us. You and me. Shhh.”

He tries to answer, but can’t quite manage it, and they sit there in silence, as she hums and continues to comfort him. Then he hitches a deep breath, lets go, and sits up. “You do whatever you think is best,” he says. “If it’s the garlic amulet, well, I’ve endured worse things in my life. Maybe, when we’re not in the sixteenth century and in danger of dying from however many different directions, we can discuss it again.”

“That sounds like a good plan.” Lucy lifts his hand to her mouth and kisses his fingers, as he likes to do with her. “I love you,” she says again, because she wants to, properly. “Garcia, you are – you are the light of my life, all right? Neither of us know right now and I don’t think we should, but if I wanted it with anyone, it would be you.”

His throat moves again as he swallows, unable to hold her gaze, too unspeakably stunned and moved and unwilling to let himself to imagine, to hope, to nurture that small charred place in his heart. “And I with you,” he says, as they turn their faces and bring their mouths together for a long, slow kiss. “My love, my heart, my own.”

They sink dreamily into the sheets together, once again cannot proceed to the full schedule of activities out of an overabundance of caution (Lucy decides she will start wearing the damn thing tomorrow, she really wants to have sex with her husband again), but please each other in other ways. Lucy wonders drowsily, as they are falling asleep in each other’s arms, if it’s concerning that they’re not glowing, or at least not as much. It happened fairly regularly each of the first few times they got together, but then, she thought that it could be related to the degree of self-control that Flynn is exerting. The first few times, neither of them were thinking about it or holding anything back or concerned with ulterior motives, but now that Flynn has decided they can be intimate as long as he’s very careful, there are both good and bad aspects to that development. Are they holding back the alchemical wedding? Should she check the page again, and see if it’s still fading? And if it is – what?

They get through the next few days without any more major upsets, though Lucy is concerned to see that the alchemical wedding page continues to look as if it has been eaten with acid, and still more of the design has gone missing. She asks Agnes for any other birth-control spells that she might know of, and is presented with a twist of paper that she is supposed to tie to her ankle, which is somewhat more discreet and at least less pungent than the amulet. At supper on Tuesday night, Asher asks if they wish him to return to France, not because the situation in London has gotten any less hectic, but out of deference to the fact that Garcia may not wish to have his father breathing down his neck in his marital home for an extended period of time. “Or,” he adds. “If you wished me at hand for consultation, I could return to Essex and stay at the New Lodge, or – ”

“No,” Flynn says convulsively, fast enough to startle everyone. “No, Papa, don’t go.”

Asher looks at him with a silent, poignant realization of why Flynn doesn’t want him to go, but he can’t say why aloud, since Christian is at the table with them and is giving them all puppy eyes. “Aye, you should stay, please, Grandfather. We still need to deal with Hubbard and the other awful beast, don’t we?”

Asher snorts, bestowing a fond look on his grandson. “You have too much a taste for adventure for your own good, my boy.”

Christian beams at this praise, looking around hopefully as if surely nobody is going to deny him now, and indeed, it is difficult to do so. “We should bring Papa back,” he goes on, utterly oblivious to any tension that might result from this suggestion, because this precious child absolutely adores his father and just wants to have him around. Lucy has seen for herself just how much love exists in this family, despite all their flaws and catastrophes, and it hurts her heart. “He has been hiding out again, he has not been by the house at all these past several days. He can do that, sometimes. I can go find him?”

Asher and Flynn exchange an oblique look. It’s clear that they’re at their wit’s end with Gabriel, and Lucy can’t blame them. She understands why he is angry, she really does, but in a sense, they have offered as many olive branches as they can and there is nothing more they can do if Gabriel won’t accept at least one of them. If they’re going to talk to him, tell him more about what’s going on, he has to be here, and it would be best if he decided for himself that he wanted to do that. They have sent several messengers the last few days, trying to get in contact with him, but they always come back without an answer. If Gabriel is stonewalling them, if he feels guilty, if he is rethinking his entire life (which, frankly, he could stand to do) and is going to emerge a changed and chastened vampire, they have no idea. Jack has been broken from Rittenhouse’s thrall, as far as Asher can tell, but they still have to be careful, though Christian has clearly adopted him already. They need Gabriel, Garcia needs him, but this back-and-forth, whiplashing affair, where Gabriel is tender one day and threatening the next, where he either wants Lucy dead or promises to kill someone for her, has to come to an end, and he is the only one who can decide what that looks like.

“Very well,” Asher says. “Go to find your father, my lad. Can you… how shall I put this delicately… convince him to make up his bloody mind?”

Christian blinks, as that is not exactly delicate, but he has a knowing expression on his face. “I’ll do my best, Grandfather, yes.”

“Good.” Asher nods regally. “That is settled, then?”

Once again, so Lucy hopes, though when Wednesday morning and the audience with Dr. Dee finally, _finally_ arrives, she has an anxiety attack so acute that she wishes she could in fact pretend to be sick in bed again. She still feels grim as they ride to Sir Walter’s house a few doors down, collect him as their escort and official introduction, and has to focus hard to make polite conversation as the carriage jolts and jounces. Dr. Dee’s residence is in Mortlake, in Richmond, a good nine miles west of London in the royal green parks, and it takes them over an hour to get there. They roll to a halt beneath the columned portico, and Raleigh politely hands Lucy down. Dee’s house is a grand country estate, but it bears signs of ruin, only partly repaired; he found it in pitiable condition, robbed and vandalized, many of his belongings and books stolen, when he returned to England after six years in Europe, with his reputation, career, and home life in tatters. There are rumors that his youngest son is actually Edward Kelley’s, though Dee has never openly questioned the child’s paternity. Lucy remembers that she’s supposed to ask about Kelley on Elizabeth’s behalf, and grimaces.

Raleigh leads them up the steps, and knocks on the great doors. After a few moments, Dee’s steward opens it, regarding them warily; they are expected, of course, but visitors are still something of an unknown commodity. Raleigh announces that he has come with Master and Mistress Flynn for a visit, as they are using the style in which Flynn is officially known in the School, and have thought it better not to bring Lord and Lady Clairmont into this. The steward withdraws, confirms this with his master, then returns and invites them in.

As they step over the threshold, Lucy can’t help but stare around, even while trying not to be a rubbernecking spectator. Dilapidated and derelict as it is, Dee’s house still looks like something straight out of _Harry Potter._ Stairs climb out of sight to gloomy upper levels, the eyes of the portraits seem to follow them as they pass, and the narrow, darkly paneled corridors twist and snake and are full of a sourceless whispering. Strange golden instruments are set on various shelves, the striking of an unseen clock far away in the house makes them all jump, and Lucy has the sensation that something has traced a ghostly hand across her hair. If Dee is regularly consulting with creatures, this place is probably rotten with magic. If he is the author of Ashmole 782, it certainly looks the part.

They reach the study at the back of the house, and are shown in, as Dr. John Dee, alchemist, astronomer, occultist, magician, and former advisor to the Queen of England, one of the most learned and mysterious gentlemen of the age, rises to his feet in welcome. He is about sixty-three years of age, with a lined, thin face, a grey beard, and a black skullcap, dressed in robes like an Oxford don (though he refused a position there and attended Cambridge), and he moves around the heavy carved desk to greet them. “Sir Walter, my especial pleasure, truly, truly. And these would be your friends who have sought so hard to meet me?”

“We have, Dr. Dee.” Lucy isn’t exactly sure how Mistress Flynn would respond in this situation, but does her best. “My husband and I will try not to take too much of your time this morning. Thank you  for – for receiving us, and apologies for my earlier indisposition.”

“Nonsense.” Dee waves it off. If he is put off or confused or suspicious of them, he does not let on. “Please, be seated. I will have food and drink sent for. It is still early.”

They sit down awkwardly, as Raleigh takes over the role of host and moderator and explains to Dee that Master and Mistress Flynn are well-off gentry with a fashionable interest in the mystic arts, and have come here to learn more about his great work. Apparently Raleigh does not need to specify which one, and Dee’s eyes flicker the way Marlowe’s did, but remain polite and unrevealing. _“That_ work?” he asks, when Raleigh is finished. “It is of a most… singular nature, you understand. The common folk – not that I am calling the pair of you common, of course – might not comprehend it.”

Lucy imagines this is Dee’s careful code for saying that it is in fact real magic and he does not want to be marched up on witchcraft charges, but Raleigh inclines his head. “You have my word and warrant that they are initiates and in full understanding of the true nature of the book. More than most, from what they have said. They have traveled a great way indeed in hopes of viewing it, and if you would be so courteous…?”

Dee’s eyes dart back and forth. He doesn’t want to refuse Raleigh, one of the few members of high society who has continued to be kind to him after his disgrace, and who offers a route back into Elizabeth’s favor and court patronage. Now that they may be about to have Ashmole 782 physically in their hands for the first time since – well, the first time ever, for Flynn, and since her initial work at the Bod, for Lucy – they can’t falter at the final hurdle. Lucy can tell that Dee is leery, but at last, he nods and gets to his feet. “Wait here.”

He steps through a door at the back of the room, surprising Lucy for some stupid reason – she didn’t really think he was going to vanish in a bang and a puff of smoke, but still – and they wait in tense silence until Dee reappears, carrying an ornate, heavy box. He sets it down, undoes the catches, and – as Lucy, Flynn, and Raleigh all lean forward in unbearable anticipation – opens the lid.

There is indeed a manuscript inside, of strange and uncertain provenance, and Lucy catches her breath. Yet even as she looks at it, she can’t shake the feeling that it is very familiar, and not in the way she was expecting it to be. She reaches out with a frown to touch the edge of the page, even as Dee himself is staring at it in confusion and horror. Whatever he expected to see in here, it was not that, and they come to the conclusion more or less at the same time, which Flynn voices first. “This isn’t it, is it?”

“This is not my – ” Dee looks as if he’s about to shut the box and open it again, just in case it’s something different next time. _“That is not my manuscript!”_

“No,” Lucy says. Because indeed, it’s not Ashmole 782. She doesn’t know where that is, but she does know what this is, since she spent countless hours in the Yale library with a version of it that was four hundred years older. “That’s the Voynich manuscript.”

Dee gives her a strange look, as the name isn’t familiar to him. “I recognize this,” he says. “It is that strange puzzle text that Emperor Rudolf owned, that no learned gentleman of my acquaintance could read. I saw it a few times at court in Prague. But it is not – someone has – _someone has stolen my book!”_

Lucy wonders if Edward Kelley managed to switch the manuscripts somehow – or more likely, since Dee finished Ashmole 782 after he returned to England, one of the creatures of his association did it for him. Kelley must have paid someone to masquerade as a willing source for Dee’s investigations, gain access to the house, switch out Ashmole 782 with the Voynich, and then abscond with it. Lucy recalls that Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, is said to have owned the Voynich manuscript at one point, that he allegedly paid six hundred ducats for it. It would have been available as a useful placebo, and nor is there any doubt as to the ultimate culprit. Edward Kelley is the only other man who knows exactly what Ashmole 782 is, how powerful it is, and what it’s worth, and who has considerable motive to filch it from Dee after the acrimony of their falling out. The identity of the go-between thief is less important. And since they happen to know where Kelley is –

Lucy looks up at Flynn, and once more can see that he’s having the same thought. “I think I know where your book is, Dr. Dee,” he says. “It is, in fact, in Prague.”


	11. Heartsblood

Flynn is barely paying attention to anything as the carriage embarks on its long, slow, bumpy ride back to London, as he is too preoccupied with the logistics of how the hell they are going to get to Prague by sixteenth-century transport – and, for that matter, if it’s even what they should do. The need to retrieve Ashmole 782 is obviously paramount, and Flynn hates delegating and would not trust anyone to do it for him. But Rittenhouse is still on the loose in London (along with Guy Fawkes, for that matter) and Flynn does not care to turn his back on either of them for long, not to mention everyone else. Maybe he can get Asher to stay here and keep an eye on things, even as he resents the necessity of wasting any of this miraculous extra time with his father. But it doesn’t look like anyone _else_ is game for the job.

At that, he returns to thinking restlessly about travel. Once you cross the Channel, it’s a straight shot of eight hundred miles east from London to Prague, and if he was going by himself, he would just run there at vampire speed, which wouldn’t take more than a day. But Lord Clairmont, encumbered with wife, servants, baggage, and other such things, has no such luxury, and while Flynn would be willing to just carry Lucy piggyback, he is not hauling the rest of it, thank you very much. Besides, an entrance in such irregular fashion would do nothing to impress Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor whose court at Prague Castle they now need to infiltrate. Rudolf is known as a homebody, a devotee of the occult and esoteric, a patron of art and science, and a Renaissance humanist who nonetheless attempted to launch a new crusade against the Ottoman Turks in 1593 that ended in ignominious disaster, and whose political failures have generally been judged harshly by the hindsight of history. Like Elizabeth, he never marries, using his allure as a husband in diplomatic negotiations without committing. In the meantime, he has a series of affairs with men and women, including various ambitious chamberlains who are ruthless about using their influence to gatekeep the reclusive emperor. At that, Flynn thinks even more grimly that it _would_ be useful to have Gabriel along, as there is no door (or rather, bed) he cannot charm his way into, but he hasn’t had a word from the idiot since his disappearing act in Essex. He’s written the letters himself, he’s been as polite as he can, he’s apologized for how things have gone and promised to explain, but if Gabriel is reading them, or just flicking them aside unopened for the solace of some other lover’s bed, only the damn birds know.

It is early afternoon by the time they make it back into London, and Flynn still hasn’t figured out what they’re doing. They’re going to have to go to Prague one way or another, that is as far as he’s gotten, and it will have to be him and Lucy since they’re the only ones who know about Ashmole 782. Travel to the Continent is currently a finicky business. They can embark at Dover, but the English enclave in Calais was lost, to Queen Mary’s enduring grief, in 1558, so they’ll flip a coin for a landing spot. The Low Countries are at war, so they’ll have to avoid any Spanish garrisons, and then arrange for a coach and horses into imperial territory. Even reckoning for the damn thing not to break an axle or be waylaid in a bog or all the other potential delays, it won’t take less than a fortnight to get to Bohemia. It could easily be July by the time they arrive, much less how long it will take to inveigle access to Rudolf’s court and Edward Kelley’s library, and while Flynn isn’t sure if they can only timewalk back to the present at the spot in Greenwich where they came through, he doesn’t want to risk it. They’ll have to come back to London anyway, which means a solid month at least purely for travel. November is suddenly looking a lot closer from this side of the tracks, and it twists a low-level spear of panic in his stomach. Why does doing things without any modern technology take so much fucking _time?_

As they finally bump through the gates of the Old Lodge, having dropped Raleigh off down the street, Flynn is planning to change and go for a long run outside the city, and he wouldn’t say no to a hunt for a fox or a hart. He can feed on animals, after all, and he should work out his anger somehow. Even having a semi-solid lead on Ashmole 782’s whereabouts doesn’t outweigh the other frustrations, and he is at his limit of people tolerance. Jiya has semi-affectionately described him as having the temperament of a grumpy badger when forced to unexpectedly socialize, and since he has paid his dues at that ultimately fruitless audience with Dee, Flynn thinks he’s earned it. He jumps out of the carriage, hands Lucy down, then –

It’s just then when he notices Christian hovering in the courtyard with an expression like a sailor braced to head into a huge thunderstorm at sea, which seems ominous. He glances at his nephew and raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Ah, Uncle Garcia.” Christian flashes a nervous smile. “I did what Grandfather bid, and went to find Papa. It took me some effort, but I have finally found him and brought him back. They are in the solar, and when I saw you and Aunt Lucy return – ”

Flynn muffles a groan. He doesn’t want to shout at Christian, who has only done as he was asked, but the very last thing in the entire world that he is in the mood for is more Gabriel drama. “Can’t they stay there?”

“Uncle Garcia…” Christian looks at him entreatingly. “Can’t you go speak to him?”

“For what?” Flynn says, exhausted. “Anyone want to lay wagers on how it ends this time? He says something foolish, he doesn’t listen, I don’t manage to say what I want, he doesn’t give me a chance, and then he rushes out again for me to find him in some filthy brothel with whichever of his – ”

“Uncle Garcia!” Christian takes a step, as Lucy coughs embarrassedly, murmurs something about changing, and recedes through one of the doors. “You’re the one who has been writing letters to him, bidding him here! I thought you meant it! I thought you wanted him to – I thought you… I do not understand this discord and enmity between you. Both of you – I wish that you would again be as you have always been. I do not like this, Uncle. Perhaps it is not my place to say so, but I – I cannot be cheery about it.”

Flynn feels the shame rising up his chest like a thick black tide, and stands there without answering, unhelpfully tongue-tied. Of course Christian is right. Flynn is the one who has been writing letters, asking Gabriel to return, so if he’s done that even if under duress from his son, Flynn has to actually face up to the consequences. Besides, this intimate warfare is clearly starting to wear on Christian, who has tried to keep his usual cheerful chin-up, bright-side approach to life, but doesn’t understand and is deeply upset by the conflict between the father and uncle who have been an inseparable unit for the entirety of his immortal life, who have never in family memory been so utterly at odds like this. He loves them both and he desperately wants them to reconcile, especially since he still has no idea what went wrong overnight, and looking into Christian’s pleading blue eyes, Flynn manages a short nod. “All right. Take me to the solar.”

Christian, looking relieved, makes a gesture, and Flynn heads after him. It’s not as if he needs instruction or escort through his own house, but he hopes that strategically foisting Christian as a buffer zone will open the conversation without immediate verbal artillery fire. Maybe Asher has been talking some sense into Gabriel while they wait, and Flynn tries to remind himself that he needs to settle this. Perhaps it was sadly understandable that their estrangement would follow him back to before it even began, because he can’t turn off the centuries of hurt and pain and separation. But this Gabriel has never lived them, and they’re not the same person, they’re not. He will apologize, Flynn promises himself. As long as Gabriel also recognizes that he has been more than enough of an ass, and does the same.

They reach the solar, Christian knocks, and then pushes the door open. Asher and Gabriel are indeed within, conversing in low, intent voices, but they break off at the interruption. All four de Clermont men survey each other without speaking, and then Asher clears his throat. “Very well,” he says. “I have ordered the pair of you again and again to settle this matter between you, and left you at your own discretion as to how to do so, yet neither of you appear to have listened. Christian, perhaps you wish to – ?”

“I want to help,” Christian insists stoutly. “Please, Grandfather.”

Asher glances at him, seems to decide that he can’t order him to leave like a child when this clearly affects him the most, and sighs. “If you will. But if Gabriel and Garcia insist upon pitching another spectacle – ”

“No spectacle,” Gabriel de Clermont, Supreme Lord of Spectacle, says with an actual straight face. “Just wishing that my dear brother would demonstrate the least initiative to speak with me, rather than sending a succession of flunkeys with – ”

“What, you didn’t come because you wanted me to grovel at your feet first?” Flynn’s resolve to keep his temper is disintegrating fast, five seconds in. This is not a good sign. “I wrote you all those letters, so if you wanted me to come in person, you could have _said so –_ ”

“And what, come in person to be shouted at again?” Gabriel’s lip curls over his fangs. “I do not know where you acquired your notions of diplomacy, dear heart, but let us hope they are never asked to be put to use in anything more serious than a – ”

“And what have you been doing, lounging around the beds of everyone in London and getting our entire family into more disrepute? That, or conspiring with Kit to – ”

“If I was conspiring with Kit, darling – which I did to track down that atrocious creature of yours, and I never heard a word of thanks for it – then I can assure you that it – ”

_“ENOUGH!”_

Both de Clermont brothers jump a foot and spring back from where they have ended up in their customary nose-to-nose position for optimum shouting, because they have never in their long lives heard their father make a sound like that. Asher is a battlefield commander, he has bellowed plenty of orders among chaotic skirmishes, and they are used to receiving them in that capacity, but never anything like this, a roar at the top of his lungs, his eyes black, shaking the glass of the windows. Christian has leapt halfway up the wall, even though his grandfather’s fury is in no part directed at him. Asher flashes across the solar in half an instant, grabs Gabriel with one hand, Garcia with the other, and shakes them like a dog with a bird in its jaws. _“Enough!”_ he shouts again, not quite at the same volume, but sounding almost as if his voice will break. They have never, not in thousands of years, seen Asher de Clermont cry. The closest he came was at Christian’s funeral, but even then he had to hold it together for the rest of the family. If he wept later in private, with Maria, it was out of the sight of even his children. It is as terrifying as if the world has wobbled off into space, as if the moon has fallen from the sky. _Things fall apart, the center cannot hold._ It was exactly that when they found him in that bunker, too late, too late. And this –

“Stop,” Asher says, a growl and a sob both at once. It seems almost indecent to observe, unbearable. “The pair of you – Christ crucified, is this – is _this_ what it is like when you come from, Garcia? Am I to stand here and see this dread destiny played out before my eyes, and to know I can do nothing to alter it? This is our fate and our future, this is what I leave behind, _this_ is what becomes of us? _God have mercy on your souls._ ”

Gabriel and Garcia open their mouths, then shut them. Gabriel stares at him in confusion and concern. “Papa, what are you talking about? You’re not – you’re not going anywhere.”

Asher realizes that he has slipped up, that he has hinted at what he cannot say, but the look he throws at Flynn is both desperate and searing. For the first time, Flynn can see the cracks in the Atlas’s burden that Asher is bearing, how he has dealt so elegantly and quietly and bravely with the news of his own death and the sundering of his beloved family. But now he is seeing with his very eyes exactly what it is going to be like, his sons at each other’s throats, unwilling to listen or to compromise, flinging their grievances in the other’s faces and insisting that the other be the first to back down. They’re too proud and too hurt and too angry to do it, and instead grind against each other like a pair of flints, striking constant sparks that fan into flame. Christian is in tears, and the sight seems to rip the spine out of Gabriel. He takes a step, starts to say something, stops, and turns away, running a hand over his face. “My love,” he says, barely audible. “Perhaps you should in fact go.”

“Please stop.” Christian sniffs, shoulders shaking, and rubs the back of his hand over his eyes. “Please stop fighting. I do not even know what is wrong. Is this about Aunt Lucy?”

“No,” Gabriel says, as Flynn says, “I don’t know, is it?”

They eye each other blackly over Asher’s shoulder, but can’t quite work themselves back into a proper shouting match. Asher has sunk into a chair as if all his endless strength has finally run out of him, face in his hands, and after a pause, the boys venture to either side of him. “Papa,” Gabriel says awkwardly. “I don’t – if Garcia would just _explain_ – ”

“I’ve tried,” Flynn says. “I’ve tried to tell you what I can, but you – ”

“Have you?” Gabriel challenges. “Have you truly? Or just – ”

“I’m tired! I’m so goddamn tired! I _know_ it was my fault what happened, but this is just more of what you did to me then. You never answered me, you never said a word, so I stopped trying. You said that you would never forgive me, you said it in so many words after Lucy was taken, and I know you won’t, I don’t deserve it, so why should I – ”

At that, Flynn realizes too late that he’s once more referring to things this Gabriel has not yet done, has no knowledge of, but he can’t help it. He tried, he tried to make it right after Matej and Christian, he knew it was his fault and he apologized endlessly, but Gabriel did exactly what he has done now: nothing. No word, no answer, no acknowledgment, after they nearly killed each other in that titanic fight over Matej’s body and had to be torn apart by Asher and Maria and kept away for weeks. Then came the attempts at reconciliation, whether via Flynn himself or by their parents, but Gabriel never let him even try, and Flynn knew it was unforgivable, that perhaps it was his true punishment to accept that and back away, that he was the one whose love and hope for a future had destroyed the family and nothing could ever make up for that, even if he had nothing to do with Matej’s choice to report Christian to the vampire hunters. So he stopped, he shut himself off and adjusted to this horrible new world living alone, and that was that. When the overtures of peace finally arrived from Gabriel’s end, Flynn was burned and exhausted, had no strength to do it again, had Jiya to protect, and knows that Gabriel almost killed her the first time they met. Then it was World War II, and Asher’s murder and the final straw for everything, and only fire, fire, fire.

Gabriel stares at Flynn in that same bafflement and rage and pained grief, unable to understand this outburst, but sensing on some instinctive level not to cast it aside. “God have mercy,” he says, with somewhat less heat. “What _happened?”_

“I don’t…” Flynn rubs his face. “I don’t think I should tell you.”

“What, again? So we can – ”

“No!” Flynn jumps to his feet again, pacing wildly to the window. “Because I honestly don’t know if I can tell you and we can survive! I already – where I come from, I – I lost you once, it happened right in front of my eyes, you sacrificed yourself to save me and you – I thought you were dead, you _were_ dead, and that’s partly why I’m here! It was the worst, the _worst_ thing that has ever happened to me, and I can’t go through that again! But then I get here and you just won’t – you won’t _listen,_ and I want to save you but it’s just getting worse, and I don’t know how to fix it. I forgot long ago, and I don’t even know where to start again. It’s just easier to be angry at you because at least I know how! I’ve failed, I’ve not been enough. I never am. But I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry._ I love you, and I would give anything to change what happened between us. Now that’s the worst thing of all, I actually have a chance to do that, and I _still can’t._ And it’s not just because of the rules of time travel or whatever else. It’s because I’m not – I’m not good enough.”

 There is a marked silence from behind him. Then he hears footsteps, and glances up wearily to see Christian at his side, looking up at him with love and concern. “Uncle Garcia,” he says. “Are you all right?”

“No.” Flynn grips the windowsill with both hands, fighting the urge to rip it out of the frame. “No, I’m not. Please go. I don’t – you shouldn’t have to hear this.”

Christian considers, glances between his grandfather, father, and uncle, and clearly can’t decide whether or not he should leave them to their own devices. Finally he squares his shoulders and nods, face pale but set. “I’ll be outside.”

With that, he touches Flynn’s arm in silent comfort, then scurries out, shutting the door behind him with a sepulchral boom. That leaves Asher, Gabriel, and Garcia by themselves, and Asher still has not managed to utter another word since his outburst. He remains where he is, bent over, as Gabriel pats his back awkwardly, completely at a loss as to how to comfort the man who does it for everyone else. “Papa,” he says. “Papa, we – well, it _has_ gotten a bit out of control, it is true, but – ”

“Both of you.” Asher’s voice is hoarse. “Both of you have an endless litany of hurts to throw in the other’s face, it seems, and I am at a loss as to how to bring you back together again. I have never sought to interfere unduly in your affairs, you know that. You are men grown, and do not require my constant governance or heavy hand on the reins, so I thought that if I merely pointed out the need and left you to it, you would make amends. That has not worked, nor does it appear likely to do so any time soon. I have never seen this between the pair of you, and if it is what becomes of – ”

He stops again, as Flynn ventures back and crouches on his father’s other side. He feels exhausted and ashamed and heartbroken, and he and Gabriel catch each other’s eye furtively, as if wondering if a continued resumption of hostilities is really worth disappointing Asher further. If he has never seen this from them, they have never seen this from him, and Flynn senses just then that Asher is the closest to cracking that he has ever been. As he said, he gets to stand here and see for himself this terrible vision of the future without him, what broken and barren scraps his family has been reduced to. Even he, strongest and wisest and oldest of possibly all living creatures, cannot stand it and remain unchanged.

“If nothing else,” Asher goes on, when neither of them say anything, “you are both far too stubborn for me to outright force you to do anything. As well, this is your conflict, so it is still the two of you who must find its ending. But since you will not listen to the other speak, it falls to me to do that. Gabriel, you first. What do you wish Garcia to understand?”

Gabriel looks deeply alarmed at this prospect. He opens his mouth, sits there like that for several seconds, then closes it. Finally he says, “I am upset that you – that you have said so little about this. That you have come from some other – wherever it is, and that you – you are so unlike the Garcia that I know, that you have declined to trust me or to even want me around or to understand what this is like for me. I want you to – ” He stops. “I just want the world to go back to how it was. Or at least for this state of unpleasant affairs to cease.”

Asher looks at him somewhat pointedly, but Gabriel says nothing else. After a pause, Asher sighs deeply and turns to his younger son. “And Garcia, what do you wish Gabriel to understand?”

“Apart from what I said earlier?” Flynn could add any number of things here, and he doesn’t know which, if any, he should. “That what I’m trying to do is huge and terrible and dangerous, and I know I should have told him more, but I can’t – I just – I remember something very different about the two of us, and I truly don’t know what I can and can’t say. That I’m not _trying_ to hurt him, I have never _tried_ to hurt him, but that I just – I don’t _know._ ”

Gabriel snorts. “That I can believe,” he remarks acerbically. “Since when do you _know_ how to do anything like this, Garcia, my darling?”

Flynn stares at him as if to say that idiots in glass houses should not throw can’t-talk-about-feelings stones, and Gabriel seems to accept that yes, he has no leg to stand on in this department. He shrugs angrily, but forbears to add further commentary. Silence hangs like a shroud over the solar, until Asher says, “Anything else?”

“I just…” Gabriel glances away. “If he is going to keep me in the dark, if he insists upon doing things with Lucy now, he could at least – ”

“You seem more than happy to do them with Kit, so – ”

“Enough,” Asher says for a third time, not quite as loudly, but just as strained, and both brothers snap their mouths shut. “I am aware that you two have lived as each other’s constant companion for near on eight hundred years, and neither of you, particularly Gabriel, can take well to having that arrangement, to all appearances, arrantly overturned. Not that I blame you, Garcia, as you are not that man anymore, and cannot be expected to pretend that you are. But both of you, try, _try_ to see the other’s point of view, I beg of you. You have both hurt the other in ways I cannot know or understand, and if there is to be any moving on from this, for either of you, you must accept that and learn to reckon with it. Do you think I have never done anything I regret? Do you not think that I have not acted rashly and foolishly and hurtfully even against those who I love most of all? Even with your mother. Maria and I have fought before, you know. We have caused each other grief and we have said things neither of us meant and we have done things we cannot take back, but we have found a way through, and understand each other the more for it. Do you wish to do that, or ruin this and each other and our family over wounds that you will not forget and will not forgive?”

Gabriel and Garcia glance at each other. The temptation to add a few extra choice things is doubtless considerable, but they still don’t. Eyes closed, Asher says, “The two of you are de Clermonts. There are only six of us in all the world, and when the time comes, there will be fewer. You are my eldest sons, my heirs, my pride and joy, and I need – I _need_ this from you.” He pauses. “Please.”

Asher de Clermont does not beg for things. He rarely even _asks_ for things. He is a man who can merely state his will and have it followed, and while he is one of the extraordinary few who would never abuse that power, it does mean that he never says this, he might never have been in such genuine fear that there is something he simply cannot do, and something that he wants the most of all. Indeed, perhaps, the only thing that matters. Neither Gabriel nor Garcia know what to say, and again, a gruesome memory of the bunker sears across Flynn’s head. It was not until they managed to get Asher’s body home to Sept-Tours that they found the note in his pocket, scribbled agonizingly in his own blood, that he had managed to keep hidden from the Nazis. Explaining what they asked of him and that he had refused, and apologizing desperately for the fact that it would mean this. That he would think of them all at the moment he died, that he would never, never love them any less than everything, and that he could not endure much more. That he hoped, selfishly, the end would come soon.

Flynn’s throat is too thick to get words through it. Then he takes a few steps back, undoes his doublet, and bares his neck in the traditional vampire gesture of submission. Without a word, he drops to his knees before Gabriel and tilts his head back.

Gabriel looks startled. It wasn’t clear if he was expecting Flynn to actually give in (Flynn himself wasn’t sure if he was going to, for that matter), and he regards him with an odd, half-angry, half-tender expression. “Garcia – ”

“No,” Flynn says suddenly. “I – wait.”

With that, he pulls off the doublet and shrugs off his shirt to boot, baring his chest, and Gabriel looks even more startled. To offer heartsblood is the most serious and consequential thing a vampire can do. It’s shared as part of the mating ritual, as Flynn told Lucy, but it is also the last-ditch effort to keep a dying vampire alive – feeding on heartsblood is the gravest emergency medical treatment, and going into the Nazi bunker, every one of the family was ready to do it if they found Asher even the slightest bit responsive. It is also used as a method of sealing and swearing the most solemn vows, where no deception or trickery is possible, and Flynn stands there feeling almost foolish, wondering if he really thought Gabriel was going to accept this, or if he should just put the shirt back on and –

Gabriel takes a step, almost despite himself, and then another. He reaches Flynn, and his eyes flick down, taking in the messy assemblage of scars on his torso. His mouth quirks sadly. “Well, I suppose this is proof enough that you are not my Garcia, and that it has been a trial of it. He does not have half of those.”

Flynn nods wordlessly, as Gabriel raises a hand and touches the old silver weal over his heart with two fingers. “Who gave you that one, my dear?”

Flynn is too raw to answer anything except honestly. “You did.”

Gabriel’s mouth tightens, but he does not challenge this, or ask for more information. His fingers remain lightly on the scar, sensing some part of its unspoken history, perhaps not able to imagine any circumstance that would lead to its inflicting, but understanding somewhat more why Flynn has been so unable to see him only as himself, without this endless following litany of estrangement and agony. “Oh, my darling,” he says, half under his breath. “You always did suffer so.”

Again, Flynn nods, unable to move away or say a word, as Gabriel considers a moment longer, then makes up his mind. He bares his fangs, puts his hand behind Flynn’s neck, lowers his head to his chest, and bites.

Flynn feels the scar break with more than a little pain, fights the memories of how he got it in the first place – sees Gabriel’s face, mad, wild, unrecognizable with rage and grief – and struggles to steady himself. If Gabriel snapped his jaws together, he could literally rip out Flynn’s heart, tear it out raw and bloody as he so memorably threatened to do to Hubbard. There is no stronger gesture of trust, not with your afterlife held in their fangs, the way it is not possible for Flynn to disguise or dissemble, or for Gabriel to doubt him. It is quite different from the pleasant sensation of a traditional feed from the throat. Having your heart laid bare can only be exquisitely painful. But in a healing way, a raw and cathartic way, the throb of a knitting wound rather than an infected one. Flynn would stand it many times over for that.

Gabriel drinks for a few more moments, then lifts his head, pulling back. His eyes are wet. “You fool,” he says. “You fool, you fool, you _fool.”_

And with that, before either of them know how, they are in each other’s arms and tumbling to the floor as if their legs have given out, clinging to each other. Gabriel crushes Flynn roughly to his chest and kisses his ear in that half-missed way his present self did at Denise and Michelle’s, and Flynn hugs him just as frantically back. He is so utterly out of practice at it that he’s briefly afraid he’ll accidentally snap Gabriel’s spine or something. He doesn’t want to let go, he’s afraid to let go, as Gabriel does not slacken his hold in the slightest and Flynn does not want him to. They press their foreheads together, gripping each other’s hands until even their immortal bones creak, until finally Gabriel kisses him on both cheeks and then on the mouth. “You,” he says, “you are an idiot, a bloody stubborn disastrous stupid blundering impossible unbelievable _idiot,_ Garcia. Christ. An _idiot.”_

“I’m sorry,” Flynn says meekly. “Are you still mad at me?”

Gabriel cups his face in his hands, laughing and crying in the same breath. “I feel as if perhaps I should be,” he admits, “and yet, I cannot find the wherewithal. If I am to shout at you more in the future, you may remind me to do so, but still. You bloody fool, you know, you _know,_ there is nothing I would not forgive you, nothing you could ever do. Nothing.”

Flynn’s fragile heart turns over. He would have given anything to hear these words from Gabriel – he still would, in fact. But as much as he cherishes hearing it now, he knows that this Gabriel does not yet know his greatest sin, the truly unforgivable thing that will break even that promise, and it makes his entire soul ache until he can barely stand it. _You will change your mind,_ he wants to say, some terrible Cassandra. _You will change your mind, and you won’t forgive me for that, and perhaps you should not. I will keep this, then, if it is all I hear from you. I will ask you nothing else again. I swear, I swear, I swear._

They remain in a muddle on the floor for several more moments, only to look around and see Asher watching them, and both of them cough embarrassedly and attempt to clamber to their feet. It takes them a few tries to do this, as they’re both smiling helplessly and unable to formulate proper words, and Asher strides over and hugs both of them hard. He does not hold a grudge for what is done; it is clear that he is only desperately relieved that they have managed it at all. “Supper, I think,” he says briskly. “A run and a hunt outside the city for the three of us, and then we can discuss what tidings you have brought back from Dr. Dee.”

“Prague,” Flynn says, struggling to remember. The task is still enormous, but somehow seems more manageable than before. He takes a deep breath, and squares his shoulders. “How to do it exactly, I’m not yet sure. But we have to go to Prague.”

* * *

Jiya remains lost in a fog of horror for several seconds after the call is dropped, as if she simply stands here and does not move, the world will right itself, the last minute will spool back and happen properly this time, and Cecilia will not be gone, will not have been snatched off the face of the earth by person or person(s) unknown. And yet, Jiya does not think it is so unknown as that. She has no proof, she has no idea how he would have gotten all the way to Scotland and the de Clermonts’ estate, but even if Cecilia did not get a chance to tell her, Jiya thinks she knows. It’s Temple, it’s Michael Temple, it has to be. Is he still there? Is he going to go after Grand-mère as well? Or is he going to abscond with his prize before there’s any chance of tangling with a furious Maria de Clermont, or –

Rufus, seeing the look on her face, comes hurrying over in concern. “Jiya? Jiya, what just – are you all right? Who was that on the phone? You look – ”

“I don’t – ” Jiya’s voice sounds wild and shrill to her own ears. She gulps a useless, reflexive breath, trying to think how to handle this. Should she call Grand-mère and warn her? But with Maria’s well-attested hatred of technology, the fact that she does not carry her phone on hunts, and that there is no cell reception in the Cairngorms anyway, there is no way she can reach her immediately. Besides, Jiya remembers how she inadvertently aggravated the situation when she called Maria too fast last time, thinking that Dad and Uncle Gabriel were dead, and she is irrationally terrified of doing it again. She feels frozen, desperate for someone else to do this, and calling Police Scotland isn’t going to be very helpful. She’s not sure they know where the de Clermont estate is, and even if they do get there and find evidence of breaking and entering, they’re no good at all at dealing with supernatural crimes. It’s the same reason they didn’t involve humans in Jessica’s disappearance in Oxford. _Yeah,_ a cynical voice whispers in Jiya’s head. _Look how well that turned out._

“Sit down,” Rufus says, towing her to the edge of the fountain. “What’s going on?”

Not making much sense, talking over herself, Jiya spills her theory that she just heard Temple kidnap Cecilia, and that it won’t be discovered until her grandmother returns to the house, which could be hours. They can race to Scotland themselves, but getting to anywhere in the Highlands takes ages, and even if they flew to Inverness, which is the closest airport, it would be tomorrow morning by the time they arrived. And as much as Jiya hates herself for thinking it, she wonders if it was some kind of calculated ploy by Temple or other nefarious individuals of his association. Get them to panic and run off, leave Jessica’s book here unguarded, or – or what? Does it matter? It’s _Cecilia._ They can’t lose her.

“What about Gucci Guy?” Rufus says, reading her mind. “That vampire who was after us? Shouldn’t we deal with him, or – I don’t know, just run off and scream like little girls?”

“I’m not sure.” Jiya rocks back and forth, gripping her knees. There is the fact that yes, they would be leaving the handsome black-haired vampire to have full run of the archives, and if there is other incriminating information here that did not ping on the TimeMaster 3000, he can just help himself. But as problems go, he has been abruptly moved down the list, and even through her fog of panic, Jiya can feel a sudden suspicion crystallizing in her mind. She looks at Rufus sharply. “What if Temple took Cecilia to Venice?”

“Venice is a lot closer to here than Scotland,” Rufus says, picking up on her train of thought. “And there was that creepy break-in at Poveglia that we were wondering about, right?”

“Yes.” Now that she’s said it aloud, Jiya is swiftly growing more certain. She doesn’t know how fast Temple can remove Cecilia to a secondary location, but if he’s working with Emma again, who can fly, that process could be considerably speeded up. He’s definitely not transporting her via human methods or risking her escape, and whatever he needs her for, he will want her there as soon as possible. Venice is Temple’s lair, his home territory, and he’s increasingly confident that there is nothing the splintered remnants of the Congregation can do to him. At this, Jiya feels unfortunately that he’s probably right, but at least this gives them some shred of a plan. Call Grand-mère and Uncle Wyatt, warn them what’s happened, and have at least one of them meet her and Rufus in Venice. It’s obviously dangerous for the de Clermonts to be spotted there, but this emergency takes priority and besides, what are the bastards going to do? Exile them again?

“We can probably rent a car here, right?” Rufus asks. “And drive to Venice? Can I get, like, a really big silver spike or whatever? I’m not exactly Van Helsing, but I can help.”

“You’re sweet.” Jiya is blessed, she truly is, that even in the midst of this frightening fuss and feather, Rufus’s main concern is whether he can help her fight the evil vampire that has just snatched her – well, there’s no easy word for what Cecilia is, but they have to get her back. “But if there’s shit going down, I couldn’t agree to put you in danger.”

Rufus looks as if he wouldn’t mind a little danger, but appreciates the sentiment. They stand up, seized with the spirit of action, and hurry in search of an Europcar or other place to get a rental, and half an hour later, they’re stuck in the end-of-day commuter traffic out of Bologna city center. It’ll be late evening by the time they get to Venice, at this rate, but there’s nothing they can do about that, and while Rufus valiantly volunteers to do battle with Italian drivers (chief philosophy: traffic signals are for chumps), Jiya calls her grandmother’s phone and leaves a terse message. Maria won’t need to be tipped off that something is wrong, obviously, but she needs to know to join them in Venice ASAP. Even for Maria, it’s a long run from the Scottish Highlands to Italy, so they have to allow some travel time. Jiya can’t decide if she should then call Uncle Wyatt as well. But as he is the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus and the de facto head of the family, and needs to be in the loop, she does so.

Wyatt doesn’t pick up either, which feels a little ominous in the present circumstances, but Jiya reminds herself that he’s a very busy vampire and just got the Jessica bomb earlier in the day. She leaves him a message as well, stressing that he should call her first and that they have an impromptu rescue plan, and this will take precedent over everything else. If worse comes to worse, she and Rufus could _maybe_ go in there alone, but it would be extremely stupid. Temple is old and very strong, will be prepared for furious de Clermonts piling in without thinking things through, and might even be counting on it. He has to know that they would take considerable risks to rescue Cecilia, and this could be a convenient trap to get them all in one place. Besides, it’s criminally irresponsible to risk Rufus, no matter how plucky, in a full-strength supernatural battle. He has many priceless skills and admirable qualities, but hand-to-hand combat is not one of them.

Jiya stares out the window as they creep up the A13, finally making it out of Bologna and picking up speed. They pass through Ferrara and a little while later, Padua, and from there, it’s only about forty minutes to Venice. Jiya wonders if it’ll be safe to go to the de Clermonts’ opulent townhouse on the Grand Canal, or if the entire Congregation (rather, three Congregation factions) has spies posted on it. That seems like a safe bet, and they need to find somewhere to lie low until Maria arrives. Jiya looks at her phone again, willing at least one of her relatives to call her, but still nothing. Temple can’t have gotten _all_ of them, surely?

It’s long dark by the time they finally turn onto the Via della Libertà, the traffic causeway that leads from Marghera on the mainland out to Venice in the lagoon, and since it’s January, the ever-present tourist crush is less noticeable than usual. Jiya takes over driving, since she’s familiar with the place and Rufus should not be expected to cope with the dark, twisting streets (he is also paranoid about accidentally driving them into a canal, bless his heart) and finds a parking garage to leave the car. As they step out in the buzzing fluorescents, casting an eerie pall on the concrete, they could be anywhere in the world, and Jiya glances around nervously, hurrying Rufus over to the ticket machine, where she pays €30 for 24 hours of parking (protip: don’t go to Venice and expect not to get ripped off). Scrupulously observing traffic regulations is probably also low on their list of concerns, but there you go.

They leave the garage and walk to the waterfront. It is definitely romantic, if chilly, with sparkling lights from cafes and talk and laughter drifting along the cobbled warrens, and Rufus looks around with interest. This is his first time in Venice, and it’s too bad they can’t go have a candlelit dinner somewhere, but business is business. (Besides, Jiya would definitely sneeze.) They find an all-night coffee shop which is as good a place as any to wait, and Jiya texts the address to Maria, who still hasn’t responded. Rufus buys himself a large black coffee and opens his laptop, working intently. There aren’t that many other patrons, but it would attract attention if he set up the TimeMaster 3000, and Jiya keeps a nervous eye on the door. If another creature walked in here – if _Harry_ walked in here, and was forced to shout at her and/or report to Keynes that he had seen them, to keep his cover –

Fortunately, this is not nearly exclusive enough for the Congregation and associated entourages, and as long as they get up to buy a cookie or something every so often, they shouldn’t be kicked out. Rufus starts to doze, head tilted uncomfortably against the peeling wooden paneling, and Jiya wishes she could just take him to the house. How long _is_ it going to take Maria to get here? Did Temple go out on the moors and catch her next? By texting her, did Jiya just give away their own location, and is Temple preparing to storm the –

Just as she’s really about to come apart at the seams with panic, her phone buzzes, and she looks down to see a message from Maria, in the stiff, old-fashioned way she texts (no abbreviations, proper punctuation, Raymond Holt-esque signing off) informing her that she will be with them in no more than twenty minutes. Jiya shakes Rufus, who wakes up with a snort, and it’s 2:41 am, they are the only customers left on the premises, and everything has acquired that strange, dreamy, late-night patina when the bell on the door jangles. Maria de Clermont appears out of the night as silently and atmospherically as any vampire could hope for, still dressed in her hunting jacket and boots, hair tousled and beautiful face cool and composed as ice. She surveys them up and down, as Rufus springs out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box and folds his hands behind his back, and Jiya could almost cry in relief with the arrival of the cavalry. “Grand-mère. You – you saw?”

“Evidently,” Maria says, moving forward to exchange air-kisses with her granddaughter and glancing around with aristocratically wrinkled nose. “You are sure we should talk _here?”_

“It was the first place that – well, I thought the house would be… you know.” Jiya is fairly sure the barista on graveyard shift, slumped behind the counter and watching some Italian talk show on his phone, is not a Congregation spy, but perhaps they should move just to be on the safe side. They step out into the night, and Jiya looks up at Maria. “When you got back to the estate, what did you – ”

“It had been attacked, yes.” Maria clearly can barely stand the insult, that first she has been driven out of Sept-Tours out of the need for safety, and then even the backup house in Scotland has been impertinently assaulted and Cecilia abducted from beneath her very nose. She is vibrating with barely controlled rage. “I returned from the hunt and saw the disorder. I had the helicopter ordered to take me to London at once, and chartered a flight from there. It was ghastly, I still do not know why humans countenance it.”

Jiya supposes that if Maria found it an imposition to travel by private jet, no one should tell her about economy class, but she can’t complain if her grandmother likewise pulled every string of de Clermont wealth and privilege to get here as fast as possible. “Do you agree with my thought that it was – it was him?”

“I do not doubt it was anyone else.” Maria isn’t moving at vampire speed, but close, and poor Rufus is having to outright run to keep up. Jiya tries to slow her down, which Maria consents to, but only incrementally. “Michel knows about Cecilia – she is Gerbert’s blood daughter, after all, and he was Gerbert’s most trusted right-hand man. And it seems that he has chosen this moment to snatch her up and force her to – ”

She stops, as both of them know that Cecilia won’t betray the family no matter how much torture Temple puts her through, but there is the obvious fact that even she might not survive it. Jiya wasn’t with the others when they found Grand-père in that Nazi bunker, but she saw his body when they brought him home. Even a supernatural creature has limits, and while Temple will probably be at pains to keep Cecilia alive as an opportune source of information for as long as possible, he could decide to cut his losses if he determines that she definitely won’t talk. It would be a final stake in the heart for the family if he spitefully killed her out of hand, just because he could, and Jiya doesn’t think they can take it. Not after Uncle Gabriel, not with Dad and Lucy in the past, not with everything they’ve already gone through. Should she call Uncle Wyatt again? He’s still at Sept-Tours, presumably. Reception is not the greatest there either. Maria has largely kept the house exactly as it was when Asher was alive, and upgrading to high-speed internet and reliable mobile coverage is not part of that.

After several more minutes, they reach the canal waterfront, which at three AM is almost empty, pools of yellow lamplight casting eerie glow on the lapping black water. Jiya takes out her phone and steps around the corner to call, but again, Wyatt doesn’t pick up. He hasn’t done something foolish, has he? He was worried about Jessica, but he’s not a timewalker, he can’t go after her himself, and he wouldn’t abandon his family to do it. Or –

Jiya shakes herself, hangs up, and returns to Maria and Rufus. “What are we doing?”

“I assume that William has told you of some strange events on the island of Poveglia?” Maria asks. “I think we should go there.”

“What?” Rufus shakes his head. “Go out to the haunted island in the dead of night? By ourselves? Even if you two are vampires? I’m not sure that’s a good – ”

“I suspect Michel was responsible for that break-in as well, and if he has Cecilia there, we shall have to go nonetheless.” Maria does not flinch. “If you find it beyond your sensibilities, Mr. Carlin, you may remain here.”

“I – no, that’s not what I meant.” Clearly every inch of Rufus is crying out not to do what stupid white people do in a horror movie, but he’s also not willing to let the women go alone, even if he is the objectively most useless member of the party. “If you – fine. Do we have a Ghostbusters gun? Because that might be something to look into.”

“Come on, you nerd.” Jiya takes his hand. “I’ll look after you, okay?”

Rufus still looks deeply leery, but does not object further, as they make their way along the canal, find a hired vaporetto, and climb in. Presumably they will return it before sunrise, but Maria tucks a fat wad of euros under the mooring rope to compensate the owner in the meantime, situates herself at the tiller, and steers them expertly into the dark lagoon. It’s downright cold out here, and Rufus is shivering, as the only warm-blooded individual present. Jiya offers him her scarf, the wake churning white behind them as they approach the isolated, looming shadow of Poveglia. The air feels different, silent and still and ominous, and Jiya can feel a sensation like crawling ants on her skin as they draw closer. As Maria navigates them up to the disused quay, they see that part of it has been cleared off and used to tie up another boat in the not-too-distant past, and it looks as if their hunch is at least partly on the money. Someone _has_ been here recently, and the best guess is Temple.

“Stay behind me, children,” Maria orders in an undertone, as they climb out of the boat and make their way up the crumbling, overgrown steps. “We don’t know what is here.”

Rufus has a yeah-no-problem-with-that look on his face, and he and Jiya take hands tightly, making sure to let Maria lead the way. They reach the island proper and glance around for signs of trouble, and after a pause, Maria turns sharply and crosses the thick, squelching turf in the direction of the old church. Bracken and rubble has been cleared away from a stone door that does look like something straight out of _Raiders of the Lost Ark,_ and Rufus eyes it up and down. “So,” he whispers. “Definitely going in there?”

“Yes.” Maria’s face is strange, and she raises one hand, brushing a small, dusty mark with an infinity of unspoken longing. “This is my husband’s sigil.”

Rufus and Jiya glance at each other. Jiya remembers Uncle Wyatt saying in Paris that Asher de Clermont’s broken Knights of Lazarus seal was on the door, and her suspicion that her grandmother might know something about it. Maria snaps calmly back to herself and pushes the door open, with a creak and a puff of dust. She leads the way down into the abyss with calm, measured strides, and after a final hesitation, Rufus and Jiya follow her.

It gets very dark very quickly. None of them are witches and therefore cannot conjure a helpful fistful of fire to light the way, though Maria and Jiya have supernatural vision and can mostly see where they’re going. Jiya has to hang back to help Rufus, for whom it is as black as if plunged headfirst into a vat of ink, and who keeps barking his shins on unseen stones. Water laps at their ankles, sometimes as far as their calves, and Jiya has a sensation of mildewing brickwork and unfriendly old magic. She hopes the tunnel doesn’t collapse on their heads, for natural reasons or otherwise. _Is_ Temple down here? Could he have made it from Scotland with Cecilia yet, if this was even where he was going? There is no other sound or movement or disturbance whatsoever. The air is still as glass, almost solid.

They reach a door, which Maria also opens, and finally descend into a low-roofed room, clearly a crypt, containing a coffin with several good-sized chunks of rock on the lid. Rufus eyes it in preparation for the literal Creature from the Black Lagoon to burst out, and Jiya doesn’t feel that inclined to get too close either. Maria glances around, then frowns deeply. “I know this,” she says, even the whisper sounding as loud as a thunderclap in the dusty darkness. “Your grandfather fought and defeated the man who is trapped down here. His name was erased from all the history books, but he was a great influence in the formation of the Congregation and the creation of the Covenant. A timewalker and a witch, but he was also turned into a vampire, and a most powerful and unscrupulous man who felt that supernaturals had the right to use their extraordinary abilities to reshape the world in a new and better image, no matter the cost. The utter antithesis of everything your grandfather believed in, in short. I was never supposed to tell anyone about it, or him.”

“Who?” Jiya bites her tongue; _speak of the devil and he shall appear_. In this creepy, dim, dusty tomb, with the devil too near at hand, it feels as if saying his name aloud could conjure him up, and Maria herself doesn’t take the risk. “Or – what?”

“This has been opened,” Rufus whispers, pointing at the tomb. “Look. There are scrape marks, and the dust has been disturbed. If Temple was down here, he was definitely doing some grave-robbing, or… I don’t know. Letting Nightmare Boy out for a spin?”

Maria and Jiya exchange sharp looks. “Grand-mère,” Jiya says slowly. “Did Grand-père actually… actually _kill_ this monster?”

“Even he did not know how.” Maria stares down at the sarcophagus lid with a very troubled expression. “It was stronger than anything he had ever fought before, and he had to imprison it indefinitely instead, with the promise of finding a way to finish it permanently at a later date. Then, of course. It transpired that he did not have the chance.”

Jiya feels a bone-deep shiver run down her back. She looks at the coffin, wondering if it would clearly be the stupidest idea imaginable to suggest that they open it themselves and check. They are flirting dangerously close to unleashing supreme evil on the world, if they haven’t already, but if Rufus is right that the tomb has been opened, does that mean they could get proof of what was in here and that Temple set it loose? Not that that would be good in any sense of the word, but at least they would know what they were dealing with. But it is clearly going against all of Rufus’s instincts to even be down here in the first place, and if she actually proposed that they open the Ark of the Covenant, possibly literally, and –

Maria, however, is ahead of her. She beckons Rufus back with a jerk of the head, takes up a position at the side of the tomb, and removes the chunks of rock. Then, while Rufus has time for no more than a horrified hiss, Maria effortlessly pushes the lid off with a thunk.

Jiya springs back, arms flung wide to protect Rufus from whatever comes flying out, but nothing does. Instead, Maria utters a small, choked cry of surprise, staring into the dark recesses, and Jiya ventures very carefully to the far side. Looks in, and jumps a foot.

There is indeed someone in the coffin, but it’s not whoever Asher de Clermont trapped down here in the first place. It’s Anton Sokolov, the missing witch and former member of the Congregation, who “resigned” under such convenient circumstances before he could testify in support of the de Clermonts at Uncle Wyatt’s deposition. He is pale and bloodless as if carved from marble, cold as ice, and Jiya has to try three times before she can detect the faintest thread of a pulse in his neck. He is alive, but only just, and the other side of his neck sports a mess of deep, ugly bite marks. He has been drained almost completely of blood at repeated intervals, stored down here for safekeeping, and that seems to seal it. Temple _has_ been down here, freed the tomb’s original occupant, and stashed Sokolov in its place. A perfect and perfectly tidy crime. Temple always does like to clean up after himself.

Maria and Jiya stare down at the comatose witch, as Rufus, realizing that no eldritch monstrosity is going to burst free, creeps up as well. It is Maria who says, “We shall have to get him out, I suppose. But if we take him now, Michel will know that we have been here, and he might well entrap Cecilia in his place.”

“We can’t just leave him here,” Jiya says urgently. “He could know what happened, what Temple did, and one more feed would probably finish him off. This has to explain how Temple got in here in the first place. He drank enough of Anton’s blood to acquire temporary witch abilities, that’s how he broke through all those magical safeguards. Besides, Anton is solid proof of all the evil shit Temple’s been doing. I don’t know if the Congregation itself gives a damn about breaking the law, but other creatures would.”

Maria considers her granddaughter with an expression that is hard to read. It clearly goes against her instincts to help a witch, even one who has been helpful to the family and whose strategic value is obvious, if it could mean endangering Cecilia in his place. Besides, Anton’s brother Gennady attacked Flynn in Sept-Tours, in a valiant if misguided attempt to rescue Lucy, and Maria has never entirely forgiven that outrage. But the Sokolovs did help actually rescue Lucy later, after Anton flew Maria and Wyatt home from Venice, and after a final moment, Maria says, “Very well. But we must be quick.”

Even with their supernatural strength, Anton is very large and a deadweight, and it takes both Maria and Jiya to lift him out of the coffin, as Rufus watches in a combination of awe and horror. Maria levers him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry; it is very odd to see a huge blond man draped on this tiny woman. They reconstitute the tomb, though it’s clearly been disturbed and the jig will be up as soon as Temple opens it and finds it empty. The trek back through the underground passage is hair-raising, every distant sound or drip of water seemingly a harbinger of him swooping down on them, but they make it back to the surface without being set on. Rufus sucks down grateful deep gulps of the cold air, as Maria maneuvers Anton toward the vaporetto and sets him down with some relief. “He is very weak. If he is to talk and give us any information, we must get him help.”

They climb back in, reverse from Poveglia with considerable relief, and return to Venice. Despite the danger, Maria decides that they should in fact go to their own house, and steers them up to the quay outside, as they sneak in as quickly and clandestinely as possible when hauling a large and unconscious Russian witch. Maria makes Rufus and Jiya wait in the front hall while she sweeps for traps or intruders, as Rufus looks around and utters a low whistle. “This is your house?”

“Yeah,” Jiya says, embarrassed. Rufus obviously knows that her family is rich, they’ve been living in Gabriel’s lavish Paris penthouse, they clearly aren’t hurting for money, but being in a baroque Venetian villa and recognizing that your girlfriend can pop along here and/or visit her uncle at work whenever she wants (or at least she used to) is something else. “We own, uh, a lot of houses. Sept-Tours, and the Scottish one, and this one, and Dad’s house in Woodstock and Uncle Gabriel’s penthouse and a place on Fifth Avenue in New York, and others I’m probably forgetting.”

Rufus looks impressed, but then, he does hang around with the billionaire daemon Connor Mason, so this isn’t totally unfamiliar to him. Maria returns, tersely pronounces the house safe for the moment, and they carry Anton up to one of the several guest bedrooms, then try to figure out what to do for him. If he was a vampire, one of them might offer heartsblood, but he’s not, so that won’t work. He’s in a bad way, and perhaps they should have taken him to A&E, but that would entail plenty of questions it is better not to answer. Macabre as it seems, they can only make him comfortable and hope he wakes up, but be fully prepared for the fact that he might not. They can at least wash and disinfect the bite wounds, and try to heal them over, so Maria and Jiya do that.

The light turns grey as they work, a cold winter sunrise climbing the walls, and while this does not bother either of the women per se, Rufus darts to close the curtains anyway. He helps by fetching and carrying things, but otherwise can mostly just watch, and it is after almost an hour of work that Anton’s eyes stir faintly beneath bruised, translucent lids. He mumbles something in Russian, of which Jiya can only understand a little. Yet again, she misses her uncle. Gabriel would definitely have the language front covered.

Then again, so does Maria, and she answers soothingly, apparently reassuring Anton that it’s fine, he’s safe, he’s with friends. Jiya has rarely seen her formidable grandmother be this attentive to anyone outside the family, much less a witch, and it gives her a strange, poignant feeling. Maria cannot fail to have been shaken by seeing her beloved husband’s mark on the door, the memories of whatever Asher swore her to secrecy over, and the fact that they still haven’t picked up an actual trace of Cecilia, but she is not the matriarch of this very old and powerful family for no reason. Terrible as it is, she is still holding it together.

Rufus goes to make a mug of strong black tea, and by the time he returns, Anton is just awake enough to sip at it in tiny, feeble bits. A slit of blue shows under his lashes, and he groans. Finally recollecting enough English, he mutters, “Where I am?”

“It’s the de Clermonts,” Jiya says awkwardly. She was in Oxford while the excitement was happening with the Sokolovs, she doesn’t know him personally, but she hopes this is in fact comforting. “I’m – I’m Garcia Flynn’s daughter, Jiya. This is my boyfriend, Rufus, and you’ll remember my grandmother, Maria?”

Anton seems to vaguely register the presence of a lady, with an apologetic expression for being less than his polite best. Again he says, “Where?”

“Venice,” Jiya says. “We rescued you from Poveglia. Did – did Temple put you down there?”

“That – ” Once more having to lapse into his native tongue, Anton calls Temple a lot of doubtless extremely colorful Russian epithets, which they take for a yes. At last, he says, “I am sorry. He surprised us. I told Gennady to make run for it. Have you found?”

“No, we don’t know where your brother is.” Jiya helps Anton sip more tea. He needs marrow, something to replace lost blood, and something like chicken broth would be a good start. “So it was Temple?”

“Of course it was,” Anton mutters. “I do not remember anything else. All is dark.”

“It’s all right, one thing at a time.” Counting back in her head to when the Sokolovs first disappeared, Jiya thinks he’s been a prisoner for almost two months. “You’re safe. You don’t happen to know your blood type, do you?”

Anton shakes his head. “No. I am sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Jiya could go find some universal-donor transfusion bags, though getting it out of a hospital would definitely require more mesmer. You’d think a bunch of vampires would have more spare blood lying around, but it doesn’t keep well, and drinking it lukewarm out of a glass is exactly as disgusting as it sounds. “Are you hungry?”

Anton allows that he is, and Rufus, who is the only one of them who can be fully trusted to put together a meal that a human would like, is given another roll of cash and dispatched to the markets, which will just be opening for the morning. He is starting to look haggard from lack of sleep, and Jiya wonders if she should go with him as an escort. Even if Temple is busy securing his advantage with Cecilia, there will be other creatures out and about, and she can’t be sure if they will recognize Rufus. Then again, they would recognize her, and maybe going along to keep him safe would backfire by drawing attention. She kisses him and tells him to be careful, and Rufus promises that he will stab anyone who tries to grab him with his silver letter opener. Or, you know, ascertain whether they’re evil before proceeding to the stabbing part, but either way, the option is on the table.

Once he’s gone, Jiya and Maria are left to brainstorm a further plan of action. Temple definitely won’t be hiding Cecilia in the tomb, if he gets down there and finds his previous prisoner gone, and there is the uncomfortable question of whether they have doomed her to an even worse fate by letting on that they know about Temple’s hideout and the terrible secret of what’s down there. They still can’t risk too many high-profile operations in the city, and the de Clermonts are all still officially personae non gratae, but Maria is not of a temperament to sit on her backside and waste time while Cecilia could be near at hand, and Jiya is inclined to agree. They can’t run off before Rufus gets back, since there is no way she is leaving him alone in this house with a badly injured witch and all kinds of miscreants on the loose, and besides, Maria is clearly of the opinion that she can handle Temple by herself. This is not impossible, since it is well established that she can be the most terrifying of them all, but it is still not the option that Jiya wants to immediately vote for. It will be a miracle if they get through this without pinging on _someone’s_ radar, and even if Temple has to switch the place he was going to hide Cecilia at the last minute, he has to be around here.

Jiya is just looking nervously at the clock and wondering if Rufus should be back yet, when she hears a noise at the front door, and she and Maria exchange a look, then leap to their feet. Yet even they do, they catch a familiar scent – mixed as well with a strange one. It is neither familiar nor unfamiliar, and indeed, seems half like something she smelled once and forgot, a bloodline that is and is not their own. In half a moment more, Jiya remembers what it reminds her of, but she doesn’t understand. What on earth would _he –_

She runs into the hall, Maria hot on her heels, just in time to see her uncle step inside. Wyatt looks as if he too has been up all night, and he jumps back with a start at the sight of them. “What are you – ?”

“What are _you…?”_ Jiya is relieved that he’s all right, though to say the least, he was in France the last time they spoke. “Uncle Wyatt, what did you – ”

“I left for Bologna after you called me,” Wyatt says. “Then I got there and saw your messages about Venice, but – ”

“Why are you here with him?” Jiya needs an explanation pronto. “He’s the one I told you about, who was following us! I saw him all the way back in Oxford, he’s been on our tail for a while, so if you’re – ”

“Hold on,” Wyatt says, glancing at his mother in apprehension. He has clearly remembered that he can’t go spilling the exact reason he went racing off to Bologna, what Jiya and Rufus were doing there, and what they found out about Jessica’s book. “It’s not exactly what you think. _He’s_ not exactly what you think. I don’t understand half of it, but if you just – give me a chance to explain, all right?”

Jiya is still far from certain that this is a good idea, but if Wyatt has brought Gucci Guy, as Rufus dubbed him, here, she doesn’t know what is going on. Maria says imperiously, “William, what is the meaning of this? Who have you brought to our house in _Venice,_ just when we should not be here to start with, and when – ”

“Please,” Wyatt says. “Just – listen, all right? Promise me.”

Jiya and Maria glance at each other, but he seems quite committed to this, and even as Jiya studies her uncle’s eyes for signs of thrall or coercion, she has to admit that he seems like himself. Wyatt glances back and waves a hand, and the handsome, black-haired, aviator-sunglasses-wearing vampire from Bologna steps inside. Jiya tenses, but he holds up both hands. “Easy,” he says, in an English accent that sounds archaic, elegant and old-fashioned. “I may have erred somewhat in my approach, but I could not be entirely certain that you were the right ones. I do not suppose you would remember me, Madame de Clermont.”

Maria stares at him, confused and thrown. “Am I to remember you?”

The vampire’s mouth tightens, but he seems to have more or less expected this answer. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket and produces two small framed portrait miniatures. They quite clearly depict – as Jiya takes a step back in shock – Dad and Lucy, and they have to have been produced during the sixteenth century. But who is this man, why does he have them, and how long has he –

“You were in Oxford,” Jiya says faintly. “Why didn’t you – ”

“I didn’t know if it was time.” The vampire shrugs, considering her closely. “Are you Jiya?”

“Yes, but – ”

“I knew your father and stepmother. A long time ago. And for that matter, your cousin Christian particularly. I owe him a great deal, and – ” He stops. “It is more than time that I repaid that.”

“What?” Jiya is completely lost. She never met her cousin, who was killed before she was born, but she knows that Wyatt was close to him, and might have been swayed by this touching appeal – but who, how – _how –_ “I’m sorry, _what_ is your name?”

The black-haired vampire inclines his head. “Jack,” he says. “Jack Blackfriars. At your service.”


	12. The Fair Triumvirate

Flynn, Lucy, Gabriel, and Christian depart for Prague five days hence. It has been a labor of Hercules trying to make the arrangements as fast as possible, and the entire circus is going with them. They have left Asher in London to hold down the home front, which Flynn still doesn’t like, but since they cannot hope to impress Rudolf without sufficient pomp and circumstance, he’s had to bring most of the household: Parry, Karl, several grooms, Meg, Jack, Agnes, and Gabriel’s very long-suffering valet, Edward. Flynn also isn’t sure about the advisability of leaving David Rittenhouse, Christopher Marlowe, _and_ Guy Fawkes at leisure in the city, but if anyone can manage them, it’s his father, and he cannot repress a dark suspicion that Rittenhouse might try to follow them. Besides, one problem at a time. Or at least only several.

The entourage departs in several coaches, which will take them as far as Dover. From there, the itinerary grows considerably more improvisational. The de Clermonts are French, so they can hopefully land in a French port without undue attention or difficulty; Dieppe, in Normandy, is one such possibility, since Calais is out. That means they can also travel across France for the first half of the trip, so they’ll know the territory and can move faster. Flynn struggles to recall who the fuck is king right now. One of Catherine de Medici’s bumbling sons – Charles IX? Henry III? No, Henry III got murdered last year, so Henry IV? If that’s the case, just for that extra bit of _je ne sais quoi,_ Henry IV is actually the only _Protestant_ king of France in history and will not be inclined to aid and abet possible Catholic spies sneaking into Bohemia. He is likely to have heard of the de Clermont family, at least, and maybe their inherent Englishness will help rather than hinder. He has some of the same enemies as Elizabeth, in the diehard Catholic League factions, and they could play that up if needed.

Nonetheless, it is still a formidably daunting undertaking that requires approximately as much planning as D-Day (and Flynn should know, he was there – they had been living in exile in London after the fall of France, and it was how he, Gabriel, Maria, and Wyatt got back into the country on their desperate mission to rescue Asher). Any way you cut it, it is going to take their sweet time to get there, and he tries not to constantly run doomsday scenarios in his head. Asher has promised to contact them if something starts to go catastrophically wrong back in London and has faster means to reach them than human messengers, and perhaps after Flynn’s cover story for his past self was sending him on a long and tedious journey to Europe, it’s only fair that he has to do it himself. In Flynn’s grumpy opinion, someone should have just murdered Edward Kelley a while back and saved everyone the trouble, but _alas._

The one part, the truly unbelievable part, which he keeps feeling tempted to pinch himself in case he wakes up and it’s gone, is the fact that Gabriel is – Gabriel is _with_ him again. After their reintroduction in this century has gone about as badly as possible, this is – Flynn doesn’t know what. It’s like a limb that has been cut off for eons has suddenly returned to him and is thinking about working again, as if he has a right hand again, a heart, a soul. Feelings that he has not even thought of, not even _dreamt_ of for hundreds of years, are shyly creeping their way back into his consciousness, and they sit next to each other and play cards on the coach without a single argument, except about whether Christian is helping Gabriel to cheat. Even that is good-natured and ends in scuffles rather than shouting, until Lucy clears her throat and reminds them that she is delighted that they are having fun, but the coach is small and the three of them are large, and inadvertently overturning them in a ditch would definitely slow them down. Even then, she smiles as she says it, and Flynn knows she’s relieved too.

It is almost eighty miles from London to Dover, necessitating a stop at a coaching inn in Chatham after they’ve creaked over the suspect wooden bridge spanning the Medway. Flynn wonders if they could embark from here instead and save some time, since it’s an important dockyard and naval base, but all the vessels are warships and there are no traders or other captains who would take on private passengers. Flynn is not eager to spend more time at sea than he has to, anyway. Vampires don’t get seasick, but Tudor ships are slow, leaky, top-heavy, and not particularly reliable at steering. (For all they like to brag about defeating the Armada, the storm did most of the work.) The famous sinking of the _Mary Rose_ in 1528 is one such example, and sailors won’t come up with a reliable method of calculating longitude until almost the nineteenth century. The Channel waters are treacherous, with shifting sandbanks and sudden storms, and only a minority of their traveling party is immortal.

Thus, the whole lot of them are squeezed into two rooms that smell strongly of horse, nobody sleeps well, and are all somewhat tetchy by the time they arrive at Dover late the next afternoon. Flynn and Gabriel head to the docks to scout out a ship, and they finally find a Flemish wool merchant who is leaving tomorrow and can cram in a few extra passengers for that bit of extra profit. Upon seeing the number of their party, plus the accompanying trunks, portmanteaus, valises, and what have you, he gets the look of a man who has made a terrible mistake, but Flynn pays him double, and they crab-shuffle aboard, so as to be ready to depart with the morning tide. It is extremely small and cramped for a six-foot-four man’s sensibilities, but at least they will only (God willing) be aboard for a few days. The merchant has agreed to turn south to Dieppe and drop them there, and at least the mercury is holding steady. The air is thick and hot and stuffy, the sunset dark crimson and the seabirds calling as they wheel in cut-out shadows above the deck. Flynn is unwilling to face the prospect of confining himself below just yet, and looks up at them. It would be a fine thing to fly. Or just take Gabriel and run ahead to Prague, let the others catch up, and –

“Do you wish some company this fine evening, my dear?”

He jumps, startled out of his reverie, and looks around to see Gabriel, who has also apparently found the present arrangements constraining and is taking the opportunity to be at liberty from them as long as possible. He is holding two pipes, one of which he offers to Flynn in a companionable fashion, and Flynn hesitates, then takes it. Gabriel goes to the brazier on the deck and lights his, then passes the glowing coal to Flynn, who does the same. They lean on the railing together in the warm dusk, listening to the shouts and bumps, the longshoremen hustling aboard casks and crates, the creak of timbers and the slap of canvas and hemp. This is the first time they have really been alone together since their dramatic moment in the solar. They’ve both been busy planning the trip, and Flynn dearly wants to talk to Gabriel, but has no idea what to say. If he is not the Garcia that this Gabriel knows, this is not the Gabriel that he knows, not the one he left behind and would have a far better idea of how to relate to. He loves this Gabriel too, of course he does, but in the way of a dim and dreamy memory, since he has been living in a shadowed ghost of his old life, the beautifully dressed set of an empty and dusty stage. He doesn’t get to take any of this with him when he goes. Not Asher, not Christian, not this man mercifully free of the terrible knowledge of their future. Flynn has found himself wondering what it matters, any of it, if he has to leave in six months and things will still be exactly the same when he gets home. But he wants _his_ Gabriel. Even as fraught and fractured and far-apart as their relationship is, at least they know everything about each other, all their sins. _And he died for me anyway._

That shakes Flynn in a way he cannot entirely articulate, and he glances back at his brother, smoking contemplatively with a look of ease at the hot, somnolent evening and the renewed pleasure of the company. At last he ventures, “Do you really forgive me?”

Gabriel glances up, blowing an elegant smoke ring. “How do you mean?”

“I – in the solar, with Papa.” Flynn looks down at his own pipe, the embers flaring and fading, like the strange, tender, truncated rawness in his heart. It feels like seeing in color again after years of blindness. It comes and goes in unbearable waves, until he almost wants to break to pieces with it. “It was – it was incumbent upon me to show that I trusted you, but it was still – he was watching us, we were doing it as much for him as for each other, and it was just to prove that we – that I wouldn’t – that we would try to be together again. Perhaps you felt pressured to say so for his happiness, and did not… well. Mean it.”

Gabriel considers that, a small, sad smile pulling at his mouth. “You did always have a knack for the dramatic gesture, my dear. And no matter why you did it, you _did_ do it, and I felt your sincerity, your pain, your love, even if in a different and much more distant way than I ever have before. I am not him, am I? Whichever Gabriel you are most accustomed to.”

“No.” Flynn looks at Gabriel again. He is conscious that he has not been doing so enough, that he needs to do it more and more. “No, you’re – you’re different, but that’s not even it. You’re the way you used to be, and that – I don’t even know how to say.”

Gabriel taps the embers from his pipe, which hit the water with small hisses. “So I am alive,” he says conversationally. “In whichever year you have come here from?”

“You – more or less.” That. obviously, is a loaded question, and Flynn tries to tread carefully. “I was telling the truth when I said we were trying to save you, and that Christian wanted to help. There’s something we need to find, and to bring back for you. I’m starting to wonder if the recipe for it is in Ashmole 782. It would – it would make sense.”

Gabriel looks as if he might ask what exactly the recipe is for, but seems to decide that he does not want to know. He takes an unconscious step closer, their shoulders brushing, and a strange lightning goes through Flynn. The pipe rattles in his hand, and he tries to inhale and exhale normally, eyes still fixed on the dark headland of Dover. He cannot wrap his head around this. Gabriel has been not just gone, but actively and violently _absent_ from his life for over two centuries, the difference between a mere empty space and a black hole, sucking down light and gravity and time itself, bending, breaking, destroying everything that it touches, and this is as impossible to conceptualize as if that black hole gave back all its stolen light and blazed across the heavens like a burning star. Flynn struggles not to pull away and flee, his usual response to unexpected moments of emotional vulnerability. God, it is so hard, it is hard beyond all reason, to trust that he won’t be hurt again if he lets Gabriel in that smallest bit, if he accepts any kind of his presence in his life again, in whatever version. Or worse, that he would hurt Gabriel. He already has. He never meant to, but he knows that apathy is often worse than malice at inflicting lasting wounds. He loves, he loves, he _loves_ Gabriel, but he lost him so long ago, and there is still no telling if this is only ever going to be the fetch, the revenant, the faded dream. His heart aches beyond breath or belief or sense. He wants to keep this, just the two of them side by side and nothing else, and remind himself that it was this way, once. It was real.

Gabriel resumes smoking, as a shaken Flynn does the same. “You may decline to answer if you wish,” he remarks lightly, as if oblivious to all of this – and perhaps he is, perhaps he cannot read this older, standoffish, scarred stranger as easily as the man who was his other half. “But I cannot help but wonder what I am like in the future.”

“You are…” Oh God, how can Flynn possibly answer this? “You’re very successful,” he says, since it’s true. “Very rich and stylish, and you do so many good things. You work as an art dealer, donate lots of money to charitable causes and rescue innocent people from war zones and make – make the rest of us look bad. You live in Paris, and you’re – ”

He stops. _Head of the family_ confirms beyond all doubt that Asher is dead, and he does not know how Gabriel would react to that, much less the central, unspeakable secret of Christian’s terrible fate. Gabriel listens pensively, then nods. “I suppose that is all to the good,” he says, as if approving a new set of clothes laid out on the bed for his inspection. “And in the strictest sense, it sounds a fine life. But is it – is it truly worth it, my dear? For whatever happened between us that poisons you so deeply even now?”

It is on the tip of Flynn’s tongue to answer that Gabriel is the one who was poisoned, literally, but once again, that is something he cannot say. Instead, surprising them both, he reaches out and puts his free hand over Gabriel’s, squeezing hard. It is a wordless apology for the things he cannot say, the crushing guilt that he can only present this artificially candy-colored portrait of the future when both of them know damn well that _no,_ it’s not worth it, that they’re fucking miserable, that all the largess and manna of the world cannot fill the void and the endless chasm of their heartbreak. He prays to God and heaven that Gabriel does not ask about Christian. He cannot tell the truth, and it would shatter his whole soul to lie.

Gabriel looks back at him, startled and uncertain, as in a way, this gesture is more raw and intimate than the offering of heartsblood in the solar – which, as he said, was done at least as much for Asher’s benefit as theirs. Their fingers interlock. They say nothing as the light lingers deep golden in the western sky, the shadows as dark as cobalt as the first stars begin to peer through the clouds. Their forgotten pipes nearly go out, and the scent of tobacco curls on the salty breeze. Then at last, Gabriel lifts his head, lifts their entwined hands to his mouth, and kisses Flynn’s knuckles. “As I said. You always did suffer so.”

Flynn is not entirely sure how to answer. He has, he _has_ , and yet it seems trite to say so. At last he says, “Thank you for coming along.”

“Oh, you know me, darling. Always up for an adventure.” Gabriel does his best careless wave. “And now that the pair of us are repaired in some measure, it seemed the most productive usage of my time – which, I shall admit, has been less than exemplary recently. Besides, Christian would insist on coming, and at least this way I can keep an eye on him. I do think he’s nearly civilized the urchin. Shall I be obliged to adopt him too?”

Flynn chuckles. Indeed, Christian’s attention has made practically a new boy out of Jack, who was even to be spotted saying “please” at supper the other evening. He is still not in the habit of consistent washing, and is wary of speaking to anyone apart from Christian, but there is definitely a change. “If you are to be a father again, perhaps less of the drinking.”

“But I do love that.” Gabriel affects a pout. “And the other entertainments, of course. I am afraid that my household is still not a terribly salubrious place for a human child, but far be it from me to interrupt Christian in his determination. My darling lad _will_ go around being confoundedly decent to everyone. I cannot reckon where he gets it from.”

“Aye.” Flynn’s throat closes like a fist. Gabriel’s casual, constant adoration of his son can never be overlooked or forgotten, and Flynn has not let himself truly grapple with the depth of his feelings for Christian. He has been too afraid that giving in, that remembering everything, will make it utterly impossible for him to leave here without completely torching the world to save him, and it bedevils him that he can’t. Nor can he yet bring himself to accept this as immutable fact. They _could_ timewalk to 1762 Sept-Tours, on the night of the vampire hunters’ attack. Dramatically snatch up Christian and take him somewhere safe to heal his wounds – Flynn could give him heartsblood too, that has to be worth something – then bring him to the present? The thought of acquiring the manticore venom to save the real Gabriel, for him to open his eyes and to see his son there, the final proof that Flynn _has_ fixed their broken family and not just him – God. He would die for it. He would kill. He would tear apart a thousand legions on a thousand battlefields. And yet. It is so far beyond his comprehension or control that if it happens at all, it will be by some power that even his supernaturally long life cannot bring him to imagine. He will ask Lucy later. Surely, after meeting Asher and Christian for herself, she can finally understand how much they lost, and figure out _something._

As if sensing the echoes of this thought, Gabriel lifts his head from where it has settled on Flynn’s shoulder. “Lucy,” he says ruefully. “I suppose I’ve utterly wrecked my prospects of ever making a favorable impression on her, haven’t I?”

“You – ” Flynn once more has to tread cautiously with that. He can sense that Lucy is fed up and frustrated with Gabriel, that she doesn’t know him like Flynn does, especially not this one, and there has to be a certain amount of exasperation that just when she finally got his present self to trust and like her, she was immediately thrown backward and had all of that progress not just undone, but set on fire. This is another reason he wants his own Gabriel back, but it seems churlish to say so. “Well,” he tries instead. “If it’s not too late for us, it’s certainly not too late for you and her, is it?”

Gabriel buzzes a laugh, turning his head to plant a kiss on Flynn’s cheek. “That was very diplomatic of you, my darling,” he remarks. “I shall try to give cause to merit more of your graciousness, and less of your scorn, and I do mean that. I am not him, who you miss, and you are not he, who I do. Yet we are what the other has been given, and – perhaps we can love each other, in the space between, in the absence of the true one? Insomuch as we can?”

He sounds uncharacteristically tentative, in the tone of a man asking for something he wants desperately and trying to pretend that he does not, that it is only a casual request and not tied to the very sinews of his soul. Flynn opens his mouth, and their eyes meet. He is about to say something – though for the life of him, he has no idea what – when they are distracted by a sound near the capstan, and turn to see Christian looking penitent. “I – my humble apologies, Papa, Uncle Garcia,” he says hastily. “I just – I thought I’d – come up and – well, I did not hear any shouting, so I only hoped that all was – ”

Gabriel and Garcia glance at each other, then back at Christian. Flynn supposes that he cannot blame the boy for being ironically concerned at the absence of a loud argument, but still. “Wanted to make sure one of us had not pitched the other in the water, you mean? No, I think we are almost getting on well.”

“Good. Good, I – ” Christian looks between them, tentative with restrained hope that the worst is over. “I have been – it has… distressed me, that is all.”

“And I’m sorry for it.” Flynn crosses to his nephew and takes Christian by both shoulders, as the boy (well, Christian was turned in his early twenties, but has always seemed a boy) gazes trustfully up at him. “You never deserved to be caught in the middle of this, and we’ve – _I’ve_ been unfair to you because of it.”

“No, my darling, do not leave me out of it.” Gabriel comes to stand next to him, and the two of them look down at Christian together. “I take my full share of the blame. You have had to mind me far more than any son should have to do for his father, and that should not be your task. Not to mention the disgraceful shouting matches that you were obliged to witness, and quite rightly told us to desist. You are far more sensible than either of us and always have been, I am afraid, and we humbly pray your pardon.”

“You have it.” Christian looks puzzled that this should remotely be a question, that there is anything they could ever do to make him stop hero-worshiping them. By God, they do not deserve him, and once again, the thought of leaving him to his fate almost buckles Flynn at the knees. Christian pauses, then adds, “I have heard that Prague is a most magical and mysterious city. Are we to chase Edward Kelley down some dark lane of sorcery or some dread alchemists’ den? I want to help.”

Gabriel snorts. “Of course you do,” he says, as Flynn considers that at least one of them has a very idealistic notion of the expected plan of action. It is much more likely to involve grubby court politics and cutthroat manipulation, but no use disillusioning Christian just yet. “We shall let you know, my love. Now if you shall excuse us, we have a call to pay upon your aunt.” He glances at Flynn questioningly. “If you agree?”

“I – yes.” Despite all his misgivings and missteps and the low-level powder keg underlying Lucy and Gabriel’s interactions in both past-present and present-past, there is nothing in the world Flynn wants more than for them to love each other. “I think we should.”

Nodding good night to Christian, they make their way below, ducking beneath the low beams and down to the cabin of which Flynn and Lucy, as Lord and Lady Clairmont, have been accorded semi-exclusive use. Flynn knocks and calls through the wood, _“Moja ljubav?_ It’s me and… and Gabriel.”

A pause, and then Lucy opens the door. She looks as if she has been getting ready for sleep, having wrestled herself out of her traveling clothes and into her shift, and Gabriel, who has of course seen countless women in all states of dishabille, decorously averts his eyes out of deference to this being his sister-in-law. Lucy glances between them, surprised but pleased at this evidence of renewed unity. “Everything all right? Christian and I were actually worried when we didn’t hear any shouting. He went up to look.”

“Er, yes, he said so.” Flynn coughs. “He was – talking with you, then?”

“Yes, we were chatting. He insisted on leaving when I changed, though.” Lucy looks between them again, brow creasing in sudden concern. “Do we need to talk about something?”

“We…” Gabriel clears his throat and steps forward. “I shall be brief, and not presume nearly as much as I have. I have behaved badly, and not as I expect for myself. You and Garcia are… you are well matched, you are good for each other, and you come from a time and place that I do not know and have not the right to pronounce judgment upon. I humbly and unconditionally plead your forgiveness, and until such time as you wish to grant it, I can keep myself at a distance.”

With that, with none of his customary flash and showmanship and flamboyance, none of his essential _Gabriel-_ ness, when he has never seen a top that he could not spectacularly vault over, Gabriel kneels. It’s not done for witnesses; there are none, except for Flynn, here in the dim, creaking, rocking hold of a Tudor galleon. Flynn wonders if Lucy knows how rare it is, if Gabriel told her that he does not apologize and does not humble himself and does not hold himself to account to a single living creature, now that Asher is dead. He bows his head and does not say a word. Waits, a statue carved of impassive, imposing marble. Even kneeling, he too is barely shorter than Lucy.

Lucy herself looks startled, unsure what she should do with this unexpected gesture of humility. Flynn can see the shadow of the other Gabriel in her eyes as well as she regards this kneeling one, the constant ghost that hangs over them both. For a moment, he is afraid that Lucy won’t forgive Gabriel, even though she has every right to be thoroughly done with the de Clermont boys and their constant parade of dramatic nonsense. But it’s so unthinkable for Flynn, so impossible, that he does not want to be asked, cannot _stand_ to be asked, to choose between the woman he loves and the other half of his heart, his soul, his –

Lucy lets out a small sigh and takes Gabriel’s offered hands between her own, the gesture of a ruler accepting homage from a vassal. That is Lucy for you. She has so much right to hold so many grudges, but she doesn’t. She constantly sees the chance for redemption, for better days, and perhaps there was never any question of her being seriously mad at Gabriel, despite her exasperation at his foibles. She nods regally, as Flynn gazes at her utterly mesmerized and thinks he can see the flicker of a white glow around her head, the reminder that she truly is a queen, and this her crown. “You may rise, my lord,” she says to Gabriel. “You are forgiven for any misdeeds you feel yourself to have committed, and I hold you in faith and companionship as ever you were before.”

Gabriel raises an eyebrow, clearly intrigued at the sound of the courtly language in her mouth, the self-consciously echoed formality. He gets to his feet, looking down at her, as he still has to stoop considerably, and their eyes meet. Flynn feels a terrible desire to take them both in his arms, is afraid that if he moves at all, he will not be able to stop himself, and so he remains exactly where he is, rooted to the ground, unmoving. The silence towers.

At last, Gabriel glances away from Lucy, and the moment is broken. “I shall leave the pair of you in peace for the evening,” he says, belatedly remembering himself. “My lord, my lady.”

And with that, and a gracious nod to them both, he is gone.

* * *

They are almost three weeks on the road to Prague. Even this necessitates a stiff pace of over thirty miles a day, and if Lucy was under any remaining impressions about the romanticism  of the sixteenth century (which really, she was not), they have been conclusively dispelled. They make it to Dieppe and land all right, which is nice, but everything from there is a constant pain in ye olde asse. They have to once more hire a sufficient number of coaches for everyone and their crap, they spend all day crammed and sweltering in the June heat, and jolt and jounce over terrain crossed with what can only dubiously be called roads. Flynn has helpfully informed her that there are highwaymen and possibly wolves on the remote stretches, and he and Gabriel have taken to galloping ahead on a pair of horses, which gets them out in the fresh air together and allows them to keep a vigilant lookout for any lurking malefactors. If there are, Lucy doesn’t actually know, because the two large and terrifyingly competent vampire soldiers dismantle them long before anyone else gets there. She thinks they might have a slightly too cat-in-cream look at the end of the day, but best not to ask.

For that matter, Lucy doesn’t mind a little space – figuratively speaking, as space in its literal sense is not a luxury that anyone is presently enjoying. She loves Flynn very much, but in the normal course of things, any well-adjusted person has friends and confidantes and people to talk to apart from their spouse, and she could use some other company. The sheer, overwhelming, crushing burden of their isolation, the fact that they have been thrown into a situation where they have no other recourse or refuge apart from each other, has of necessity driven them to cling, to vanish into each other and pour all their troubles and emotions into the other’s lap, and while that’s _fine,_ it is not, in the long term, very healthy. At least Lucy is feeling less as if she’s been dropped into a battering, bewildering Renaissance Faire that never ends; she is, however unwillingly, getting used to the sixteenth century. She no longer feels terrified that she might die every instant Flynn isn’t in sight, and since they can’t be intimate anyway in the crowded and far-from-private inns and hostelries where they stop for the night, a bit of distance might not be the worst thing in the world. Just for a change.

As a result, Lucy is spending a lot more time with Christian, Agnes, and Jack, her usual companions in the coach. Agnes, of course, is terribly fond of Christian, and has mostly been persuaded to overcome her suspicions in the Jack department, even if she still looks at him squiggle-eyed as if expecting David Rittenhouse to burst out of his chest. It is a comfortable, familial atmosphere, Agnes acting as communal grandmother, and Lucy has already resolved that she can’t send her back to Scotland to die, to hell with history. But if that’s the case, if she’s willing to save this woman, how can she do any less for Christian, Flynn and Gabriel’s beloved shared son, when his loss lies at the root of so much of their trauma and estrangement? She and Flynn can’t really talk alone, but she can see it in his eyes every time he looks at Christian. They’re both thinking the same thing, they have to be, but they already discussed this. There is no way to take Christian home with them from here without massively wrecking the timeline and possibly destroying the very de Clermont family they’re trying to save, and any side expedition to 1762 would be just as dangerous. That doesn’t mean that Lucy isn’t willing to risk it, but they have so much on their plate that she has to compartmentalize. Maybe there’s an answer in Ashmole 782 for this. Maybe there’s an answer for everything. That’s what Flynn has hoped this long, however vainly, and while it’s dangerous to put too many eggs in that basket, Lucy also feels resentfully that if this goddamn manuscript has caused them so much trouble and misadventure and suffering, the least it could do is fix their manifold problems. Really, they deserve no less.

They trundle across eastern France, through the disputed Lorraine, and finally cross into the Holy Roman Empire. There is a small holdup at the border, which turns dramatic as Lucy and Agnes have to conjure up an emergency thunderstorm to distract the soldiers and they all get very wet as they splash and jounce away at top speed, Flynn and Gabriel mounted backwards in their saddles and firing their muskets as fast as they can reload them. It is a spectacle to inspire awe, if not confidence that their further travel will be untroubled, and they go hard, long past dark, to be sure that they have lost their pursuers. Flynn, splattered with mud from head to toe so that he himself resembles the famous golem of Prague, swings down from the saddle, swearing and wiping his forehead with his gloved hand, which does nothing to remove it. “Well, that was extremely stupid. Are you all right?”

“We’re fine,” Lucy says, reaching back to help a wide-eyed Jack out of the coach. There isn’t an inn here, or even any kind of settlement, so they hang their wet things over branches as Parry, Karl, and the others start to pitch camp. Outside the flickering circle of torches, the German forest seems dark and thick and cursed, the proverbial haunt of monsters in all the fairy tales, and she glances uneasily over her shoulder. She is glad that they have Flynn and Gabriel and their guns – and their fangs, for that matter – close at hand. “I hope we didn’t crack an axle. There were a few good crunches back there.”

Flynn swears again and duly crawls under the coach to check, only his booted feet sticking out, as Lucy regards the sight with a grin. She senses a presence at her back, and turns quickly, but it is only Gabriel. He looks windswept and exhilarated by the adventure, and doffs his soaked wool cap ceremoniously in her direction. “That was a lovely bit of magic, my dear. Quick thinking indeed. I thought those ale-swilling bucketheads would let us through, but it seems they were destined to be troublesome.”

“Did you try the mesmer?” Lucy doesn’t want to suggest to Gabriel that she knows how to be a vampire better than he does, but they have the gift of rendering mortals suggestible and open to influence. Then again, maybe this band of obstinate Germans simply resisted being bamboozled by sheer strength of numbers. “Or – ”

“Mesmer works best when directed only to one individual,” Gabriel says, “and intended to achieve one result. It grows diluted when spread among many, and when you must convince them all to do something quite contrary to their own wishes. It is not a tool to force and coerce; it takes some crumb of what is already there and persuades the human that this, truly, is what they want to do, impelling them to disregard all other considerations that might ordinarily hesitate or halt them. As I had cause to learn on All Souls of last year, when – ”

He catches himself, but not quite in time, as Lucy’s eyebrows fly up. _All Souls last year_ – the first of November, 1589. Better known as the date when, according to Marlowe at least, Henry de Prestyn was killed. Combined with her conviction that Marlowe was strategically lying and taking the blame for someone else, and that Gabriel is the only person who knows anything about Kit, she wonders if she should stray into this particular minefield just now. She glances around, but everyone else is involved with pitching camp, starting a fire, drying clothes, and getting supper together, and Flynn is still under the coach, though the now multi-lingual swearing seems to indicate that he will be occupied for a while. Lucy takes a step closer. “My lord,” she says. “Where precisely were you on All Souls night last?”

Gabriel glances at her with too-careful casualness. She does not need to remind him that he begged her pardon on the ship, that he put his volition and his forgiveness and his loyalty quite literally in her hands, and going back on that now will not be a very good guarantor of his sincerity. He sweeps an artful lock of dark hair out of his face, as if in hopes that he will be so beautiful that she will forget what she was asking, but when this does not work, he shrugs. “Here and there, out and about. I do not recall what – ”

“Were you with Kit?” Lucy keeps her tone level, as if to demonstrate that he’s not in trouble, she’s not accusing, she just wants to know what happened. “By any chance?”

Gabriel’s dark eyes flick up and down. She can sense him trying to find out what Kit might have told her without outright asking, and that, as much as anything, confirms her hunch that he knows something about this. Her stomach drops. Things have been so high-wire-act with Gabriel, even if much improved the last fortnight, that the last thing anyone wants is another bombshell thrown into the middle of their porcelain-fragile progress. She knows that Flynn needs this, needs Gabriel, has been so hungry for even this pale shadow of their old camaraderie and closeness that he clutched at it the instant it was properly offered, but she can’t overlook this. Lucy tilts her head back to meet his gaze. “Were you?”

“My lady…” Gabriel looks away, affecting his usual nonchalance. Then with an effort, he glances back. “What precisely are you asking me?”

Fine. If he wants to be blunt, Lucy is willing to be the same. Still more quietly, she says, “Do you know who killed a man named Henry de Prestyn?”

Gabriel is good at this, even if not quite as utterly unreadable as Kit, but she can see that it’s familiar to him. “Henry de Prestyn,” he says, after a long pause. “Unless I misremember, your own name is Preston, my lady, is it not? Is that the reason for your interest?”

“It’s complicated.” Gabriel knows about the timewalking and Ashmole 782, at least in broad strokes, but it’s still a guessing game as to how Lucy should explain this to him. “He is – well, he will be related to me, yes. But that’s not the main reason for my interest. I think his death is a crucial part of the puzzle about Dr. Dee’s alchemical manuscript, and he might even be – I think it might be made of him. His… skin.”

Gabriel looks startled enough at this gruesome detail that Lucy, to her relief, thinks he really doesn’t know anything about what became of Henry’s corpse. “His _skin?”_

“That’s what your father said, when he examined it. He thought it was made from some strange amalgam of creatures, and Henry de Prestyn – he had mixed creature lineage, he was something called a Bright Born, according to Lady Beaton.” The name of Lucy’s (former?) tutor sticks in her throat, and she finds herself grateful to be away from London and ordered to spy on her on Elizabeth’s behalf. “His father was a vampire and his mother was a witch. His skin could have had strange powers that someone wanted, and acquired for the right price. I know people buy and sell dead bodies for any number of reasons, I don’t think you had anything to do with that, but if you know anything about his death, please – please tell me.”

Gabriel looks almost as cagey as Kit, and his eyes flick to Flynn, still immured beneath the carriage. At last he says, “I do recall meeting the man, yes. If it is the same one I think it is, I cannot be entirely certain. And yes, I learned the limitations of the mesmer on him, in a way I had not encountered before. If he had some extraordinary heritage or unusual abilities, perhaps that explains my failure. I did not know that at the time.”

“Was he alive the last time you saw him?” There’s not really a tactful way to ask _did you murder him?,_ but Lucy is trying. “All Souls 1589 – he died later that night. You had to be one of the last people to see him. Did he strike you as odd in any way?”

Gabriel doesn’t answer, but his mouth tightens. Finally he says, “Aye.”

This feels like getting blood from a turnip. “How?” Lucy persists. “Clothing, look, speech? Any of that? Something more?”

Gabriel shrugs. “Very well. Henry de Prestyn. Kit and I, and some fair companions, met him near Smithfield. He… seemed most unwell, and badly fevered in the brain. He insisted that he had to find someone, and seemed dead set that when he did so, great malice would fall upon them. He made little sense, but he seemed deadly serious, and the risk could not be taken. We attempted to restrain him in some hovel, but when we found he had got free – ”

“Please, Gabriel.” Lucy reaches out and takes his hand, clearly startling him. “Please tell me. I’m not – I’m not angry. I just want to know what happened.”

He studies her, almost unblinking. Then he says, “What did Kit say?”

“He said that he killed him,” Lucy says carefully. “I don’t – I don’t think he did.”

“You are correct on that.” Gabriel turns his head away, as if he will not do her the dishonor of looking into her eyes as he says this. “Very well. I killed him.”

Lucy had a growing suspicion that this might be the case, but it still shocks her somewhat to hear it confirmed. She opens and shuts her mouth, keeping hold of his hand in case he feels inclined to bolt like a spooked horse. She says, “Okay.”

Gabriel glances at her, clearly expecting to see rage or blame or grief on her face – he _has_ murdered her ancestor, after all, even if a many-times-great grandfather that Lucy didn’t even know the name of until a month ago. “Do you bear me ill will for it, my lady?”

“No,” Lucy says truthfully. “It’s – well, it’s startling, but… why did Kit say it was him?”

“Because…” Gabriel considers that. “Because,” he says, as enigmatically as possible. “Because Kit, despite his theatrics – he _is_ a daemon, after all, and a poet and a playwright, no less – fights the right wars. It was why he was still willing to return to my side to help me track down this Rittenhouse beast of yours, despite the unfortunate circumstance of what passed between us at Clerkenwell. If I say no more, my lady, you must forgive me.”

“All right,” Lucy says uncertainly. She glances at Flynn, who is making rattling noises indicating that the carriage repair is proceeding apace. “Can I tell Garcia about this? That I know who killed Henry?”

“I should not demand you to keep secrets from your husband.” Gabriel’s eyes remain on Flynn as well. “But I do wonder, my lady, what it profits him to know. If he asks directly, you may say so, yet does it matter whose hand did the man to death, and why? It is you who should have the more quarrel with me, so if you did wish to throw a gage – ”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Lucy assures him, laughing a little despite herself. There is definitely no way that she is about to challenge Gabriel de Clermont to a duel for her murdered ancestor’s honor, and while she is dying of curiosity about the rest of the story, she can sense that she should be careful. In some sense, Gabriel is right; it doesn’t matter who killed Henry de Prestyn, only that he’s dead. And the only person that Lucy can see Gabriel taking such drastic action to protect, that he would kill Henry rather than risk him doing someone harm, is either Christian or Flynn. But why would Henry de Prestyn be so eager to find them? If he traveled from the seventeenth century specifically to hunt someone down, it’s far more likely to be Flynn. Did Gabriel kill him to protect Flynn? That is entirely plausible. But then what, _what_ did Henry want, and why would he risk everything on this trip? Flynn’s past self was in the city then, but not this Flynn. Did Henry get his dates wrong, arrive on All Souls 1589 when he was aiming for All Souls 1590, the night the gate opens for Flynn and Lucy to return to the present? Will someone else come instead? Some

A deep chill goes down Lucy’s back at the thought. Was Henry attempting to _prevent his own murder,_ and everything that will happen with Ashmole 782 as a result? Does he, or his descendants, hold a grudge against the de Clermonts for it? Are she and Flynn literally Montagues and Capulets, star-crossed lovers from ancestrally opposite sides of the supernatural tracks? Do the Prestyns know it was Gabriel? Does Amelie? Do they blame Flynn, or – _what?_

Lucy’s brain is about to explode, but she manages to nod. “For now,” she says, “I’ll say nothing. But we will speak more of this later.”

“Very well.” Gabriel accepts that, and turns to go. “Good night.”

Despite the misadventure of the border crossing, things settle down somewhat as they haul through Bavaria, though their pace slows to a maddening crawl on all the hills. It is high summer and the light lingers late into the evening, so they travel as long as there is even a dim glow and roust out again at the crack of dawn. Lucy is sore to the bone, gritty and grimy, has not slept more than a few hours at a go since they left London, and is strongly tempted to ask Agnes if they can just conjure a whirlwind (or a whole tornado) and fly them there like Dorothy whisked off to Oz. She is at least looking forward to seeing Prague again. Since she obviously works on alchemists and alchemical history, she spent six months there for research purposes, and it’s a truly beautiful city. Lucy spent a lot of it shut up in the Národní Archiv, but the rest of the time she wandered around in wonder that literally all of it was so jaw-dropping. It is crammed with magnificent medieval and baroque architecture, cafes, casinos, churches, chocolate shops, bookstores, bridges, taverns, tourist traps, weird side museums, underground clubs, concerts, operas – and these days, throngs of sunburned tourists who speed past en masse with their earphones and cameras and descend in their dozens of busloads upon major landmarks, in their soulless consumer corporate travel experience. Prague is almost as visited as London, Rome, or Paris, and is much smaller than all of those, occasionally leading to the sense that it’s bursting at the seams. Lucy knows that it was in a glorious golden age under the rule of Rudolf II, and is excited at getting to see it in all its mystical Renaissance splendor, but she would personally stab several people for the comfort of an air-conditioned coach on a smooth highway.

At last, a solid three weeks since they left London and several days into July, when the heat lies like a soaked blanket in the Bohemian valleys, they toil up one last hill and look down into the city itself. The river Vltava snakes through the middle of it, crossed by the famous _Karl_ _ův most_ – the Charles Bridge – with the castle and the unfinished St Vitus Cathedral towering on the left bank and the Old Town on the right. The red rooftops and gothic spires are more or less in the configuration Lucy remembers, though several of them are missing and the city is ringed by a formidable wall that is almost gone in the present. As with everything in the sixteenth century, it is smaller, muddier, and more fragrant than its modern counterpart, but it is recognizably still Prague, and her weary, travel-sick heart lifts a notch. “Look,” she says to Christian, who is peering out the coach window with her. “We’re here. It’s one of my favorite places.”

He glances at her curiously. “Have you been here before, Aunt Lucy?”

“Yes, I…” Christian still doesn’t know about the timewalking. “A while ago. I was studying. It was different then.”

Christian looks momentarily perplexed, as surely it cannot have been _that_ different, but then shrugs and boosts Jack up to have a peek as well. Agnes, who has never been this far from her small Scottish hometown in her life, looks suspicious, and as they start bumping down the road, her nostrils flare. “Smells queer. I’m nae sure about it.”

Lucy is tempted to remark that this is probably the sunshine, but then, the last thing Agnes warned them about was Jack, who turned out to be a thrall for Rittenhouse. She pays extra attention as they lumber under the imposing ancient fortress of Vyšehrad on the south headland, seat of the first Czech kings. They reach the gatehouse in a few more minutes, and Flynn and Gabriel cycle through their various languages until they find something the guards can understand, which turns out to be one of Flynn’s. As the resident Slav, he has the most leg up here, though Rudolf and his court will all speak French, the language of educated Europeans, and probably Latin and German. Edward Kelley, of course, speaks Elizabethan English, but unlike in modern Prague, nobody else will, and Lucy resigns herself to mustering up her half-remembered scraps of Czech, which are just as likely to get her stared at quizzically as to be understood. She also wonders where they are going to stay. At least in London they had Flynn’s comfortable town house to serve as a base of operations, but here they are freelancing it. As long as Lucy can get a room with a door that shuts and a privy she doesn’t have to share with twenty people, she probably won’t complain.

After several rounds of intense discussions between Flynn and the guards, he finally pays a toll that, to judge from the look on his face, is far higher than he thinks is any way warranted. This does, however, secure their entry to the city, and the driver cracks the whip one more time over the back of the tired horses. They start forward with a bump and a thump, and roll through into the teeming muddy labyrinth beyond. Only a few of Prague’s iconic cobbled streets have presently been paved, the intersections devoid of the crisscrossing wires of tram lines and vintage trolley-cars, and while Lucy tries to keep her bearings in reference to the modern city, she is soon hopelessly confused. They veer and rumble down an assortment of byways almost too narrow to admit the coach, scraping paint and plaster off the tilting walls of shops and houses. Prague does not yet sport its full complement of baroque jewel-boxes, and a devastating fire in 1541 destroyed large parts of the castle complex and the surrounding township. Even so, Christian’s wildly romantic visions of the place are in fact not far off. Rudolf’s court teems with alchemists, astrologers, artists, authors, magicians, musicians, poets, priests, scientists, scholars, soothsayers, and just as many frauds, charlatans, con artists, hucksters, and other enterprising types. Living in solitary splendor in Prague Castle, Rudolf is rarely seen in public, preferring to gaze for hours on his collection of priceless art and sculpture. If they’re going to get to Edward Kelley, they’ll have to contrive an audience, and that will take some planning. All the palace intrigue at Elizabeth’s court warns Lucy not to underestimate the difficulty, and she is not at all sure that she is prepared for it.

At last, they draw to a halt in a lane just steps off the _Staroměstské náměstí,_ which Lucy knew as the famous Old Town Square, though in this day and age it is the only town square. Peering through the buildings, she can just catch a glimpse of Prague’s astronomical clock, mounted on the side of the town hall. It was first placed in 1410 and claims to be the oldest of its kind in the world, a beautiful and elaborate piece of engineering that tells the stars and the seasons as well as the time. It gives Lucy quite a jolt to see it here, four hundred-odd years earlier, as if she could walk toward the square and find herself back in the twenty-first century. Just in case, she doesn’t risk it.

Everyone piles out of the coaches, stretching and wincing, and wanders around in search of fresh air and water from the pumps set out front for travelers. Flynn heads inside the handsome half-timbered establishment that they appear to be patronizing, as he is the only one with sufficient language skills to talk with ordinary people around here, and Gabriel raises a companionable eyebrow at Lucy. “Garcia did teach me old Ragusan, many centuries ago,” he remarks. “But I am unsure what it will avail me here, alas.”

“No, probably not,” Lucy agrees, just as lightly. Gabriel has been making a concerted effort to be friendly to her, as if in apology for his previous behavior, and while it’s much better than the alternative, she can’t help but wonder if he’s trying to keep her quiet on what he told her about Henry de Prestyn. He said that he wouldn’t forbid her from telling Flynn, but he clearly would much prefer that she didn’t, and Lucy is not sure what she should do about it. She doesn’t like keeping things from Flynn, especially something this consequential, and the last thing the de Clermont brothers need is more silence and secrecy. While their spending almost every waking moment together for the past three weeks has mended some of the most obvious fractures, it can still ultimately only be a temporary measure. The real reckoning awaits at home, when – if – they ever get back. Will that Gabriel remember what happened here? Did he already lose his memories? He told her in Sept-Tours that he felt like he had met her before, but didn’t know when or where. Does that mean he was forced to forget everything that happened, that all of them were? By who? By _Lucy?_

That thought gives her a chill, and she pushes it away. She obviously hopes it’s not her who is responsible for mind-wiping everyone, for any number of reasons, and glances at Christian, who is helping Agnes down and addressing her as “Grandmother Agnes,” to which the old Scottish witch does not object in the least. Christian just cheerfully makes a family wherever he goes, gathers in strays and adopts them all, and as Gabriel watches his son with a faint, unconscious smile, it pulls painfully at Lucy’s heart. They have good reasons for not telling him, but it cannot be otherwise than monstrously unfair. She has seen a tangible change in Flynn, in fact something that she has never seen before, in his shy, clumsy, quiet delight at being united with Gabriel once more. It radiates off him, it alters him in ways she hasn’t even imagined, and this is only a pale and long-lost copy of the Gabriel that he wants. Lucy can’t stand to take that light away from either of them, having gleaned these brief, poignant glimpses at what their life (for it was just one life, singular, not two) used to be like. At times, she herself has felt a few uncomfortable prickles of jealousy, which she tries to squash. It does make more sense, why Gabriel initially reacted the way he did. Lucy isn’t altogether sure she would have done much better. Try, maybe, but still.

At last, Flynn returns with a disgruntled expression and more muttering about how he really hopes it isn’t a pattern that they get fleeced in this damn city, and informs them that they will be staying here for tonight. He and Gabriel will see about finagling an introduction at court tomorrow (Gabriel’s face when he says that, with a casual, unthinking trust that it will in fact be the two of them, is something else to pull at Lucy’s heart) but for now, this is the end of the line. Everybody is heartily grateful to be done and not about to quibble, and they head inside and up the stairs to the narrow, creaky top floor, the entirety of which Flynn has purchased for their convenience, as the grooms start schlepping in the luggage. Finally, _finally,_ Flynn and Lucy find themselves alone, and he shuts the door and swipes a hand through his road-dusty hair, which has grown (in Lucy’s opinion) quite attractively shaggy, almost long enough to tie back. “I thought we were never getting here.”

“I was starting to wonder that too.” Lucy moves over to look up at him. It’s too hot and they’re too tired to do more than exchange a grubby kiss, but he smiles tenderly at her and tidies a loose strand of hair out of her face. Their three independent weeks have served their purpose in making her eager to spend time with him again, and she feels the vaguely pleasant ache of enforced celibacy that she would like to remedy at some point when they are not wearing several pounds of dirty Tudor clothes and smelling strongly of horse, unwashed traveling companions, and the murky summer evening. Not really conducive to passionate romance, that. _“Can_ you and Gabriel get an audience?”

“We can apply ourselves to the castle, at least,” Flynn says. “I’m sure you know more than I do about how much of a hermit Rudolf is, though. And right now, Kelley is still highly regarded, so I don’t think we can get access without going through the official court channels. We’d get into a lot of trouble if we looked like we were trying to co-opt the emperor’s favorite alchemist, and gossip travels fast around here.”

Lucy considers wryly if there will ever be a time in their life again when they are _not_ in trouble in some shape or form. “Could we try? Dramatic midnight visit to Kelley’s house? I _do_ know more or less where that is. There’s a cheesy museum there in the present day.”

Flynn snorts with laughter, stooping to kiss her forehead. “That’s my girl,” he says, with rough affection. “Though I think we’re having a bad influence on you.”

“Just trying to consider all our options.” Lucy plays her fingers on the grimy gilt embroidery of his doublet. Even in the heat that is making her sweat like a pig, his body remains invitingly cool, the sensation of his flesh like carved marble. “But you said back in Sept-Tours that you bought the fragment with my handwriting on it in Prague, 1875. Do you think I write it here, and hide it with the rest of the manuscript? And if Kelley _does_ have Ashmole 782, what do we do with it? We can’t steal it ourselves, we can’t bring it back to the present as a duplicate of the one that exists there, but we also don’t know what the hell happened to it after I couldn’t get it out of the Bod again.”

“All good questions,” Flynn says, a furrow linking his dark brows. “And ones for which I’m not sure I have an answer. I was telling Gabriel that I think the recipe for manticore venom antidote might be in it, so we’ll need to consult it long enough for Agnes to help us with that. You’re right that we can’t steal it, or interfere with it getting to the present however it does… but that fragment said that it was hidden with the assistance of the School of Night. Does that mean _we_ bring it back to England and hide it ourselves, and you write it down so our past-future selves find it and know what to do?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Lucy traces the line of his collarbone. “But I don’t feel like we can just leave it lying around, especially if Rittenhouse followed us from London. I know your father removed the thrall from Jack, but if there’s still another spy in the household – ”

Flynn glances at the closed door, as if to check whether someone is lurking outside it. Evidently he does not sense anyone, as he turns back to Lucy, but his face doesn’t entirely relax. “If we do snatch it up and make a run for it,” he says, “we’ll be chased all the way back to England, whether by Kelley and friends or by Rudolf’s soldiers. Gabriel and I can handle that, but if one of Elizabeth’s spies accidentally starts a war with Bohemia, they’ll – ”

“Throw us out the window?” Lucy suggests, half-humorously but with a warning edge. One of her favorite random historical facts is that there are not just one but two Defenestrations of Prague – the latter of which, in 1618, started the Thirty Years’ War, which ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and basically set the stage for the modern international world. Throwing people out of windows is something that the Bohemians take very seriously, and while it wouldn’t hurt Flynn, Lucy is quite sure that she herself would not enjoy it. “Do you think we might take it to Sept-Tours? At least that would be a safe place. Well, safer.”

At that, she can see that Flynn is edgy about the idea of once more summoning the wrath of Khan down on his family home, which is understandable. “We don’t have to, of course. But your mother, Wyatt, and Cecilia will be there, and if Asher returns from London – ”

“I doubt he’ll leave England until we get back,” Flynn says. “Too many balls in the air, too many things to juggle. Which reminds me, I need to send word to him that we’ve arrived. There are messengers of the Knights of Lazarus who can have it to him within a few days. There’s a chapter in Prague, in fact. Gabriel and I will make contact later.”

Lucy notes how quickly Flynn has fallen into the habit of speaking of “Gabriel and I” in all things, and can’t help but think that no matter how hard he was determined to maintain distance, his resistance has crumbled like dust and she can only hope this doesn’t hurt him even more. “That sounds good,” she says. “Any chance of a wash-up?”

Evidently her options are rinsing off at the pump with everyone else, or waiting until after supper for a proper bath, and Lucy elects for the former first with the latter later. She is damp and not much cleaner, but at least somewhat cooler, as the mortals among them tramp into the common room to eat, and the vampires sit down to be sociable. Gabriel and Flynn don’t bother with human food, but nurse a goblet of wine apiece. Lucy has noticed faint marks on their necks, and figures that they are once more feeding from each other, which could also explain Flynn’s unusually chipper attitude. He’s used to running at practically starvation level, and it’s amazing what the difference of getting to eat regularly makes on anyone’s temperament. Once more, an uncomfortable sprig of jealousy wriggles its way into her stomach. Of course she is not going to grudge Flynn any of this, but is he doing it with Gabriel because it still seems easier than asking her?

Lucy pushes that away again, reminding herself that they were both in agreement about wanting to spend time with people apart from each other, and they can sort out the drama at a later date, as the world still awaits saving first. The room is loud enough that nobody is paying attention to them, and the three of them lean in, though both the boys have supernatural hearing and probably don’t need to. “I’m going to send word to Papa first thing tomorrow,” Flynn says. “Do you think we call on the castle too, or wait a few days and allow word to spread of our presence?”

Gabriel shrugs. “That is the fashionable thing to do, no doubt,” he says, in the sleekly self-satisfied tone of a man who is quite sure that he can start several new scandals within twenty-four hours of arriving anywhere. “Though if it is results we are after, we may have to be dreadfully uncivilized and invite ourselves. Of course, you could always send me to seduce the emperor. Was that not a thought?”

“No, we don’t need to do that,” Flynn says hastily. “I – well, yes, maybe I considered that option once, but we didn’t bring you along to just – what – whore yourself out to – ”

“What a pity. I am such an excellent whore.” Gabriel smiles, looking even more pleased with himself, as Flynn chokes on his wine. “Besides, I have never bedded an _emperor_ before. Surely you would not be so cruel as to deny me this carnal feather in my cap?”

Flynn looks as if he’d better not risk a second sip of wine. “How can we be sure that it would work? If some ridiculous Frenchman walks into the court from nowhere and actually manages to – well, you know, it would set the whole place in a – ”

“How can we be sure it would _work?”_ Gabriel looks downright insulted. “Are you actually suggesting, my darling, that I would leave any lover of mine unsatisfied? Especially one upon whom so much hangs upon his pleasure? True, there might be some to-do with those who resent that I am so very good at my task, but I have never feared the wrath of small-time human toadies or dreary husbands and do not intend to start now. It may take me a few days to achieve success, but I am confident in its execution.”

“There would be gatekeepers,” Flynn points out. “However many levels of bureaucracy, hoops to jump through. Even you couldn’t sleep with all of them.”

“But I could _try.”_ Gabriel is clearly just yanking Flynn’s chain, but there’s a slightly merciless sparkle in his eyes. Lucy gets the sense that this is their entire dynamic in a nutshell. “Don’t you want me to have fun?”

“You have too much fun,” Flynn mutters, not entirely under his breath. Lucy chews her cheek, as well as her supper (sausage, sausage, and more sausage seems to be the name of the game here – welcome to Central Europe), not entirely sure if this conversation will benefit from her contribution. “Besides, weren’t you trying to behave for Christian?”

“Oh. That. Yes, I was.” Gabriel glances along the table at his son, who is happily sampling the sausage Agnes is foisting on him (she knows that he’s a vampire, of course, but seems not entirely certain that the poor boy won’t starve to death if she doesn’t ensure that he eats). “Perhaps you could distract him while I snuck out the back?”

Flynn huffs a reluctant, affectionate laugh. “You are shameless, you know.”

“Oh, yes.” Gabriel raises his goblet in half a toast, then glances at Lucy. “Shall we make a wager on whether I could do it, my dear?”

“I’m sure you could,” Lucy shoots back. “Isn’t the question how fast?”

“You know, I actually think I like her.” Gabriel pats her arm, then glances back at Flynn. “Two to one, darling. I believe you are outvoted.”

“I never said that I actually supported this idea,” Lucy reminds him. She does like Gabriel too, even despite and perhaps because of his constant outrageousness, but she feels some need to keep them on track. It’s true that they don’t have tons of well-thought-out options with guaranteed success, but sending London’s most accomplished lothario to go make politically useful whoopee with the emperor feels like it should at least be Plan B. Nobody can argue with Gabriel’s willingness, apparently, but then, they rarely do. She takes another bite of a different sort of sausage, trying to come up with alternatives. “I did suggest the midnight raid on Kelley’s house?”

Gabriel brightens. “Oh, I vote we do both.”

Flynn looks as if he’s not certain what he expected by bringing Gabriel “King of Drama” de Clermont with them, and is equally unsure how he ended up as the responsible, level-headed one, as it is not a role he can customarily be found playing. “Radical notion,” he says, very dryly. “We go to Rudolf’s court tomorrow and introduce ourselves like ordinary people first, _then_ see if further measures are called for.”

“And I can ascertain which of the chamberlains I may have to murder,” Gabriel adds, putting one arm around Flynn and reaching for his wine goblet with the other. “Oh, darling, you know I would not actually kill them. Just have them turn up in a pantry somewhere, very confused and sans culottes. Though if I did accidentally squash one of the interfering little weevils, that would be appreciated by everyone _else_ who wants an audience, no?”

“And not by Rudolf,” Flynn shoots back. “I imagine he keeps everyone at arm’s length for a reason. Gabriel, _moje srce,_ I implore you not to be an idiot. For once.”

Gabriel quirks both eyebrows, with that satisfied-cat look he had that first morning when Flynn was feeding from him. Lucy imagines that he has gotten exactly what he wants out of this entire interaction, but just as she’s glancing down at her sausage again, Gabriel digs Flynn in the ribs with an elbow. “Pay attention to your wife, Garcia. She is feeling left out.”

Flynn raises his eyes to the heavens, but shifts so that he can put his free arm around Lucy, drawing her against him, and she sighs and settles her head on his shoulder. It’s nice, she has to admit. There is something easy and comfortable about all of them when they’re like this, and when Flynn feels more relaxed than he has from the moment of their first crash landing in Greenwich. As the traveling party begins to finish their supper and drift off in search of bath and bed, Lucy finally disentangles herself, leans to kiss Flynn’s cheek, and stands up. “I could still do with a proper wash. You two take as long as you like, Garcia, but come upstairs later, okay?”

“Of course,” he promises, catching her hand and kissing it in return. “We just have a few things to discuss first.”

Lucy imagines that they do, one of these being what exactly they are doing tomorrow and whether it will involve opportune seduction plans, but she glances at Gabriel rather pointedly. She feels that this would be a good time for him to fill Flynn in on the subject of Henry de Prestyn, since she’s respected his wishes and not mentioned it. Besides, it’s clearly tied up with whatever is going on with the two of them, and even if it ultimately makes no difference how Henry ended up dead, it’s something that Flynn should know about. At the least, Gabriel might be willing to share details that he has withheld from Lucy, about whatever Henry said to convince Gabriel that he was an imminent threat and killing him was the only option – not to mention why he would have timewalked specifically to November 1589. _Would_ Henry have known about the de Clermonts? Was he mad at them for something else? Or _what?_

Gabriel glances back at Lucy with a deliberately unreadable expression, so she can’t tell whether he’s picking up on her unspoken instruction or not – or if he is, what if anything he intends to do about it. She sighs and climbs the dark stairs, moving down the hall to the window where she can gaze out at the crowded rooftops of Prague. They are gauzily aglow in the hot summer twilight, and Lucy remembers her evenings spent wandering the city in the golden hour, the way the light is unbelievably ethereal on the old stone and the day’s humidity has cleared off into a perfect, pleasant blue. She always felt that Prague was a perfect place to fall in love, and some romantic part of her was disappointed that she didn’t. Now here she is with her mostly-husband and the entire family and entourage, after three hard, grimy weeks on the road, and as soon as she gets used to the rules of one game, it changes. Yet again, she feels guilty for wishing it would all just stop, and she could _sleep._

Lucy stares out the window until her eyes go out of focus, her forehead resting against the worn wood of the frame, until she remembers that if she has a bath waiting, she shouldn’t let it grow cold. She shakes her head and turns away, intending to make her way to her room, but just then, she sees a door open into the courtyard below, and a slight hooded figure slips out. It looks both ways as if to be sure that it has been unobserved, then darts away, pushes the gate open, and steps through, shutting it quickly. It’ll be trouble if they’re caught out after curfew either way, and Lucy isn’t sure if it’s just another guest from the inn on some mysterious errand. After all, Prague is playing host to quite a lot of that sort of thing these days. But as the figure reaches the corner and prepares to turn out of sight, a breeze catches the hood and pulls it back, just enough for Lucy to catch a glimpse of their face.

She opens her mouth, and shuts it. Nothing comes out. Not that it would matter if it did.

It’s Meg.


	13. The City of Gold

“So what?” Flynn asks, wrapping his arm around Lucy so that she can lie more comfortably on his chest. It’s very late, and the rest of the inn is fast asleep, but that’s not the only reason they’re speaking in barely more than whispers. “You think Meg is the spy?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy shifts closer, their bare legs tangling under the quilts, sweat dewing in the dark curls of her loosened hair. They didn’t do much talking when Flynn first came to bed, as there was a lot to catch up on, and tempting as it is to slip off into sated post-coital slumber, they can’t do that, not when there is yet another problem that demands their immediate attention. “But it would… it would make sense. Somebody read my journal in Essex, and Lady Beaton denied that it was her, and somebody has been reporting on our movements to some degree. Meg has had constant access to me and all our discussions and papers and plans. What if she didn’t actually accept the fact that I was a witch, when she told me that she did? What if she told me that to put me off the scent, and she’s been spying for – I don’t know, it could be anyone. Elizabeth? Father Hubbard? The London authorities? Building a case for a proper witchcraft trial, or – what?”

She can’t keep the fear and hurt out of her voice, and Flynn hugs her closer, his mouth ghosting over her temple in a wordless reassurance. It helps a little, but not much. Lucy liked Meg, _likes_ Meg, considered her one of her friends, if not her _only_ friend. Now at least she has Christian and Agnes, but the thought that Meg, who brushed her hair and listened to her problems and has a sister in Islington who she’s helping to support, Meg who has been nothing but useful and accommodating, could turn on them… it burns in a peculiarly painful way. Was Meg coerced, threatened that something would happen to that sister and her young children if she didn’t do what she was told, and give them (whoever _They_ are) exactly what they needed to know about the strange and so-dangerously-intriguing Lord and Lady Clairmont? Lucy doesn’t want to think she did it willingly, but she doesn’t know.

“We don’t have proof,” Flynn says. “Meg could have had some late errand, or… well, I agree that it looks bad, but we have to be careful. If we immediately let on that we know about her, it could set off more unfortunate events, and we can pay attention to her, or feed her misinformation. Classic counterintelligence. That way, even if she _is_ the mole, we can still turn this to our advantage somehow.”

Lucy doesn’t answer. It’s one thing for Flynn to talk coolly about using Meg as a pawn, to accept that she can’t even be off her guard in her private chambers with her own maidservant, but she doesn’t know if she can do the same. She rolls over, looking down into his shadowed face. “What if we talk to her? Pull her aside, and just… ask her to explain what she’s been doing? I’m sure we could get the truth somehow. Find out who she’s working for, or – anything.”

“If she knows who she’s working for,” Flynn points out, with his usual brutal pragmatism. “I’d be surprised if anyone sufficiently smart to recruit Meg would be clumsy enough to let that slip. They’d go through intermediaries, nothing face to face. I don’t like it any more than you, but we have to act as if we don’t know anything, at least for now. Maybe you can slip in a few tantalizing pieces of information, and see how she reacts. Or – well, I suppose we could assign Christian to spend some time with her. It’s impossible to dislike him, and he might work out a thing or two. Keep him out of other trouble, anyway.”

Again, Lucy doesn’t answer. It’s clear that Christian needs a profitable and semi-safe occupation, but he is raring at the bit for some madcap adventure in wild and romantic Bohemia and will be very disappointed if denied it. Maid-babysitting duty is not likely to be what he has in mind, though he’s probably too genteel to actually complain. There’s a pause as the inescapable subject of Christian hangs over them. Then Lucy says softly, “We can’t let him die, Garcia. I don’t know how we avoid it, but we – we can’t.”

“I know.” Flynn blows out a breath, staring at the ceiling. “I’ve gone through every option I can think of, and I still don’t know how we could pull it off. If we _did_ travel to 1762 and the night he died – my past self would be there, we’d all be there, and the place would be under full-scale fire and assault. Both of us could die, or our interference could ensure that my entire family dies. That, and Matej – ” He stops. “Do I go there and let _him_ die too?”

Lucy doesn’t answer. Flynn has never said anything about the worst night of his life, with good reason. But it’s also the case if they go to 1762 in an attempt to rescue Christian, that obliges Flynn to literally relive it, to be just feet away from the man he was once planning to spend his life with and to turn his back on him, to see the titanic fight with Gabriel that nearly killed both of them, and hear Gabriel’s screaming when he finds out that Christian has not survived his injuries. It’s _possible,_ but it’s so clearly a last-resort nuclear option that they need to exhaust all other avenues beforehand. None of the family has healed from experiencing that terrible trauma for the first time, and to ask Flynn to go through it again, with everything just as much on the line as it was then… he’d do it if he had to, Lucy knows. There is very little that Garcia Flynn de Clermont would not do in the name of saving his loved ones. But as a result, his self-preservation instinct is in the several thousand degrees of negative numbers, and Lucy can’t lose him. She knows it’s selfish. Flynn is – he’s _hers._ She will go with him if he decides to do this. She will take him there herself. But it fills her with cold, clutching dread even to consider, and she turns her head a little frantically, trying to remind herself that it’s fine, he’s here, they are together. “Kiss me.”

Flynn leans down and does so, fingers threading through her hair, and Lucy doesn’t let go of him until some of her ambient terror subsides. She settles down, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I shouldn’t – it’s your family, it’s your son, I don’t get to tell you what – ”

Flynn looks at her, startled, and Lucy wonders if she wasn’t supposed to say it out loud. It is clear to her that that’s the case, that Garcia is Christian’s uncle in technicality but also his father in practice, but she has become familiar with the delicate dance that must be performed around this. For his part, despite being many hundreds of years older than her, Christian seems perfectly content to treat Lucy as his mother, which is both alarming and oddly heartwarming. She has obviously been thinking about the subject recently, and… well, it’s somewhere to start, at least. But if she is also accepting parental responsibility for him, how can _she_ leave him behind either? She was orphaned when she was eight, and the constant sense that she would give anything if her parents would just come _back,_ if they had cared about her more than whatever was so important in Russia… if they had done _more…_

Sensing the troubled direction of her thoughts, Flynn pulls her closer again. It’s very late, and they’ve been traveling for weeks. Lucy nestles against him, shuts her eyes, and falls under.

She is roused the next morning by the slants of golden light across the floorboards and a knock at the door. Meg’s voice calls, “My lady? Are you awake?”

Lucy tenses. Flynn is gone, as he usually is in the morning, and she isn’t sure where they left this dilemma last night, other than to keep calm and carry on. They’ll need to deal with Meg differently if she’s being forced or blackmailed, rather than if she’s doing it by her own free will, and that means Lucy needs to act as if everything is fine. She sits up and calls back, “Yes, do come in.”

Meg bustles in, and sets to dressing Lucy and fixing her hair with the usual chatter, how nice it is to be off the road, it’s a lovely city but she could not understand the fruit-seller at market this morning, how long do you suppose we’ll be in Prague, my lady? At the last, Lucy tries not to look too sharply sidelong, wondering if this is a strategic fish for information disguised as light conversation, and if she needs to be as paranoid as Mad-Eye Moody from now on. If Meg _is_ callously double-crossing her, it’s hard to see any signs of it. Maybe it wasn’t Meg she saw last night, or she just had to run out and grab something before curfew, or – Lucy really _wants_ to believe there’s an alternate explanation, or at least a less serious one. When she’s dressed and brushed and otherwise fit for public consumption, she gets to her feet. “Thank you, Meg. You’ve been such a help, I know I can always count on you.”

She can’t tell if that gets a reaction, as Meg merely nods in gracious acknowledgement and turns to tidy the bedclothes, and Lucy, unsure whether her career as a double agent of sorts is off to a promising start or not, goes downstairs. She finds Christian, Agnes, and Jack at breakfast, as Christian bolts to his feet at the sight of her and hastens to offer her his chair. “I don’t need it, Aunt Lucy,” he says. “Shall I fetch you something?”

“You don’t have to, I can ask the innkeeper,” Lucy assures him, though Christian’s natural inclination in every situation is to be as helpful as possible. “Where are your father and your uncle?”

“They hurried off before sunup.” Christian glances sternly at Jack, who is stuffing a honey-soaked roll into his face with sticky little hands, and the boy straightens up guiltily and wipes his fingers. “They wanted to send word to Grandfather, back in London, and Papa thought they should present themselves at court early, before the queue. He supposed that most fortune-seekers aren’t known for being up with the lark.”

This is probably true, although Lucy wonders if Gabriel planned it that way to more conveniently happen upon Rudolf in his dressing gown. The innkeeper arrives with breakfast (sausage), and Lucy beckons to Jack’s honey roll and manages to ask in rudimentary Czech if she could have one of those too, please. She is encouraged that he understands her, albeit with some squinting, and feels the momentary thrill of the unexpectedly-linguistically-successful traveler. Glancing over at Agnes, she asks, “How do you find the place?”

“Peculiar.” Agnes sniffs the ale, then picks it up and sips it cautiously. “Though the folk seem friendly enough, aye. I barely dared to sneeze when we were crossin’ Germany.”

This is true, since Germany is in the full grip of witch-hunting fever and Lucy and Agnes are very lucky that their thunderstorm at the border didn’t cause further problems or unfortunate rumors. The party passed just south of Trier, home of the long-running witch tribunals, though you couldn’t have paid them to actually enter it. Prague, of course, has a far more tolerant approach to the mystical arts, and you’d have to burn half the city to scourge the sorcery from it. On that thought, Lucy lowers her voice and leans in. “Do you think we would be able to contact Amelie Wallis again? From later in her life, I mean?”

“It’s possible,” Agnes allows. “Even if we are nae where she lived, in your America, there are certain runes and charms and pentacles that allow a witch to be drawn in from all of time and space. There must be places here to do such arts, and books that ken them. We can search for them, ye and I, if – ach, ye wee scallywag, that’s no yours. Keep your thievin’ mitts to yourself, or I’ll box your ears.”

“It’s all right,” Lucy says, seeing Jack looking with puppy-dog eyes at her extra honey roll, which he has just tried to snatch. “I’m sure I can ask for another.”

“Ye must discipline the bairns,” Agnes informs her. “Otherwise they grow up bold and insolent. I’m a mother o’ five myself, and I’d nae have stood for _them_ stealin’ food at table.”

Lucy supposes that they can talk about the changing philosophies of parenthood at a later date, but passes Jack the roll anyway, and he gives her a blinding, gap-toothed grin of gratitude. “Thank you, my lady,” he says, clearly to demonstrate to Christian that he has, in fact, learned _some_ manners. “I should have asked before.”

Agnes purses her lips and harrumphs, as if this unfortunate coddling of food-stealing children will result in them growing up to be food-stealing adults, but the innkeeper is happy to bring a few more, likely because he has twigged on that his English guests are wealthy and he doesn’t mind giving them reasons to spend it. When breakfast is over, Lucy decides that they aren’t going to lounge around all day waiting for Flynn and Gabriel to get back, and rises to her feet, beckoning to Christian and Agnes. “Let’s go.”

They fetch their things – they don’t need cloaks, it’s high summer and a bright sunny morning to boot, but Christian seems to think that the mystique of the fabled alchemists’ city demands a cloak to properly skulk in misty dark lanes and cabbalistic chambers, and has determinedly donned one as they head out. Prague is busy with commerce and industry and chicanery, and some disreputable-looking little man in a sixteenth-century trenchcoat accosts Lucy within seconds of her setting foot out the door. “Charms for the lady! Charms for the bed, for the home, for the children, for the pretty neck, sweet lady! Charms to keep the milk sweet and your husband biddable! Ten ducats, ten ducats only!”

Lucy snorts, wondering if ten ducats (otherwise a wildly extortionate price for anything) is a reasonable price for ensuring Flynn’s compliance, but she has other ways to do that, and in the manner of getting rid of irritating street vendors everywhere, pretends she doesn’t understand Czech as she marches past him. They step into the town square beneath the painted façade of the Orloj. Lucy is not expecting to see a convenient sign swinging in front of a wizards’ library or other useful place to begin their search, but the place is bursting at the seams with magic, real and fake. There have to be scriptoria around here, or apothecaries or other suppliers who sell regularly to Kelley and the alchemists at the emperor’s court, and after a further moment of consideration, Lucy makes up her mind. “This way.”

Christian and Agnes follow her through the crowded, narrow streets toward the Vltava waterfront and the handsome Charles Bridge, which is the only way across the river and into the castle district. It is devoid of its complement of striking baroque statues, which won’t be installed until 1700, and the cobbles are slick with mud, ordure, and the trampled refuse of the various vendors who wander along it, shouting for customers and brandishing fish so freshly caught that most of them are still vainly wriggling. Christian takes hold of Agnes and Lucy with either hand, his vampiric strength easily keeping them from slipping, and they make it to the far side with only minor calamities. Once back on firm ground, they start up the hill beyond. Kelley lives in this neighborhood, and someone from the household, whether his wife or servants, must regularly patronize the local shops. If nothing else, the residents are likely to have some juicy gossip about their famous neighbor, and Lucy wonders if her piecemeal Czech is up to the job of extracting it. Only one way to find out.

Prague Castle looms on its bluff above them, not a bustling tourist attraction but very much a working fortress, as they set to the hunt. Lucy leads them down an assortment of snaking side lanes, until she finally spots a small bookseller’s and print shop that looks like it might supply volumes of an occult persuasion. She beckons at her companions, and pushes her way in.

The shop is cramped, dark, and smells of ink, wood, smoke, and cedar, along with something caustic, a chemical solution that might be used either to set the type or to burble in some crucible and piped alembic. The proprietor is a small, sullen-looking man behind a high counter, and there is only one other customer, who does not look up at their entrance. The proprietor himself does not look terribly thrilled to see two women enter his shop, doubtless considering it the repository of sacred masculine wisdom, and clears his throat in a pointed fashion. In Czech, he says, “Madam, may I help you?”

“Er, yes,” Lucy answers. “I have just arrived in Prague, and my husband is in search of some books.” When in doubt, explain your actions as something your husband told you to do. People might still be suspicious that way, but less so. Depressing, but there you have it.

Hearing her accent, the proprietor blinks. “You are English?” he asks, switching to it. If Kelley and company are regular patrons, he has probably felt it worthwhile to learn it, and if Lucy might be one of them, he could get considerably more helpful. “Newly arrived?”

“Yes.” Lucy can sense him waiting for a name, and isn’t sure if she should offer it. “I was hoping you had some books of alchemy.”

There’s a faint rustle from the other customer, who she can sense is now paying attention to them, even as he remains ostensibly engrossed in his book. The proprietor considers her shrewdly, as if wondering if he can strategically overcharge a woman who will know (at least, so he thinks) less about the sacred art and which volumes are the most valuable. “Is your husband a practitioner then, madam?”

“He has an interest,” Lucy says, truthfully enough. “He has read the works of Paracelsus, and there are any number of new texts to be had here, I imagine?”

There’s another rustle from the other customer, and she catches him watching them out of the corner of his eye. She stares at him, calling him on his rudeness, and he coughs, placing the book back on the shelf and turning to her with a courtly bow. “Apologies, my lady,” he says, in German-accented English. “I am something of a connoisseur on the works of Paracelsus, you see. I have collected and copied out many of his manuscripts. Perhaps there is something among my holdings that your husband would wish to purchase?”

Lucy is surprised. “And you are?”

The German bows again. “Herr Karl Widemann, my lady. To whom do I have the honor of addressing myself?”

Lucy just manages to keep the surprise off her face. Karl Widemann – she knows that name. If she’s not mistaken, he is in fact a collector and curator of alchemical manuscripts, particularly Paracelsus – and more importantly, he is Edward Kelley’s personal secretary. He is also supposed to have had something to do with the sale of the Voynich manuscript to Rudolf, as one of the other theories about its creation is that Kelley deliberately faked it to fool the emperor and earn a fat payday. This would not be out of character for Kelley, who also used a constructed language, Enochian, to transcribe the messages of the angels he claims to communicate with. But as Lucy has settled the provenance of the manuscript elsewhere, this is not her main concern. Widemann is an important and useful person to know, and she inclines her head. “I am Mistress Flynn. This is my mother and my – my son.”

Widemann looks surprised, since the thirty-something Lucy doesn’t really look old enough to be the permanently twenty-something Christian’s mother, but is well-mannered and thus does not openly question either a lady’s age or her skincare regimen. “Charmed, charmed,” he says, bowing to Agnes and Christian, who looks delighted to be referred to as Lucy’s son. “And your husband would be – ?”

“Recently arrived,” Lucy says again, as if pretending not to know that Widemann would like more information on him. “Perhaps you would be willing to make some introductions for us to the alchemists at court?”

“I would, of course, have to meet your husband first.” Widemann raises an apologetic eyebrow. “What is it precisely he has an interest in?”

Lucy explains Flynn’s supposed alchemical investigations, showing enough familiarity with the terminology and complicated elemental correlations of the subject that the proprietor gets a disappointed look, as if realizing that cheating her is not in the cards. Widemann, however, seems impressed, and compliments her on what a capable assistant she must make to her husband, while Lucy smiles closed-mouthed and thanks him. He recommends a few of the books, which Lucy is then obliged to purchase, and hands over some silver ducats. While the proprietor wraps them and ties them with string, Widemann says, “May I be permitted to call upon your husband later, madam? Where in the city are you staying?”

“At a lodging house near the clock square.” Lucy wants to keep him close at hand, but she isn’t going to give too much away too quickly. Widemann probably wants to scout a rival on his master’s behalf, as any English alchemist arriving without warning in the city isn’t necessarily something to be welcomed. “I will be pleased to ask him.”

Widemann seems to accept that she must await her husband’s permission, and they part cordially enough. As they step back out into the street, Christian looks at her with awe. “That was amazing, Aunt Lucy. You are most knowledgeable.”

“Thanks,” Lucy says, admittedly rather pleased. Despite her uncertainty about how to handle Meg, she might not have totally blown that, and it is a solid lead on Kelley, no matter what Flynn and Gabriel have managed to do (in whatever sense of the word) at Rudolf’s court. They make their way back to the main thoroughfare, and Lucy makes an executive decision. “We should walk by Kelley’s house,” she says. “Nobody can blame us for that, can they?”

Agnes and Christian glance at each other, then shrug, and follow her lead. Kelley’s house is up the hill and down a side street, and it is already known as the Faustus House, which makes Lucy think of Kit; the original Faustus is sometimes said to have lived in Prague. It acquires a suitably mystical reputation in later years, with tales of supposed hauntings, though in the midday sun it looks thoroughly ordinary. There is a gate leading to the inner courtyard, and children and servants hurry back and forth within. One of them looks suspicious at seeing Lucy, Agnes, and Christian stalling outside, and they move on, even as Lucy glances up at the thatched gables of the house. Kelley’s workroom is in the attic. Is Ashmole 782 up there right now? Are they just steps away from it, perhaps opened in pride of place? She was half-joking when she suggested the midnight smash-and-grab, but not entirely. Even Gabriel, good as he is at many things, isn’t likely to succeed with Rudolf in a day. But this…

Lucy reminds herself that brazen burglary would get them hanged, not to mention causing a legion of other problems, and they should put up a good-faith effort to acquire it through legitimate channels. But is Kelley actually going to let it go? He already went to considerable effort to swap it with the Voynich and steal it from Dee, and it’s the one authentic piece of magic that he possesses, among all his smoke and mirrors and trickery. He gets imprisoned in 1591 and only released upon swearing to actually produce gold for the emperor this time, and with Ashmole 782 at his disposal, he could extend his career for any number of years. Lucy wavers, terribly tempted to suggest to Christian that he climb up the wall and break a window. But this is deeply irresponsible of her, and she bites her tongue. “Come on.”

They circle away from Kelley’s house and back toward the bridge. It is going on early afternoon by now, and Lucy is very hot and would like to get out of the sun and have a drink of water. When they reach the inn, Flynn and Gabriel still aren’t back, which hopefully means that things are going well at court and not that they were immediately thrown into a dungeon for outrageous behavior. While she eats midday dinner, Lucy opens the books she purchased and begins flipping through the pages in search of more clues. Did Gabriel tell Flynn about Henry de Prestyn? She can’t be sure, but she doesn’t think so. Are there other examples of hybrids being hunted for their unusual powers, or preserved in grimoires? Even if Gabriel did kill Henry, they haven’t established who retrieved the body and sold it to Dee. That might not matter either, but Lucy is a historian. She likes being thorough.

Her eyes start to cross under the constant onslaught of crabbed gothic script, and she is dozing off when there’s a soft sound at the door. She turns with a jolt to see Flynn, who looks apologetic. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“No, it’s fine.” Lucy rubs her eyes, gets up, and goes over to kiss him. He tastes like pipe smoke, wine, and wind. “Where’s Gabriel?”

“Still at court,” Flynn says, with a tolerantly exasperated tone. “I came back here to see how everything is going. What are those?”

Lucy explains her morning, her meeting with Widemann, and her reconnaissance of Kelley’s house, at which Flynn looks both impressed and alarmed. “That was brave of you,” he says. “And clever. But I’m not sure it is safe for you and Agnes to wander the city alone.”

“Christian was with us,” Lucy reminds him, though she knows that this is also part of his concern. Christian can definitely handle himself, especially against human opponents, but the idea of him getting into more trouble is one to stress Flynn out. “And I was just at a bookshop. We weren’t actually in danger.”

“Kelley is dangerous,” Flynn says. “Not in the usual way, perhaps, but he won’t stand for his cozy position to be threatened, he will do anything to protect it, and we should not forget that. And – ” He glances around and lowers his voice. “Has anything else happened with Meg?”

“No.” They left Jack with her when they went out for the morning, since she’s fond of him and has been looking after him for most of the trip anyway; to suddenly whisk the boy from her clutches might play as suspicious. “She was perfectly normal. Did you say anything about that in your letter to your father? When will he write back?”

“Yes,” Flynn says. “And hopefully soon. A vampire running at full speed should be able to make it from Bohemia to London and back within less than a week. Gabriel and I know a few of the Knights of Lazarus here, we fought together in the Hundred Years’ War. Battle of Caen. If we can’t trust them, we can’t trust anyone.”

Lucy blinks, performing that swift mental calculation she does whenever Flynn casually mentions an event from his life – in this case, the Battle of Caen was in 1346, and she imagines that the Knights, among the French force trying vainly to resist Edward III’s assault, were protecting civilians from the infamous five-day sack that followed. “Well,” she says. “That’s good to know. What did you two get done at the castle?”

“I’m sure Gabriel went there just as much to entertain himself as anything.” Flynn sighs. “At the very least, he’ll have everyone talking about us, so someone in the emperor’s court might decide to see what we’re up to. What form that takes, who knows. As for Gabriel – ”

Lucy waits, but he doesn’t go on. Then she prods, “What about Gabriel?”

“I just…” Flynn trails off. “God, it’s just so strange. In a good way,” he hastens to add. “An amazing way. It’s just – that’s why I can’t trust it, not entirely. Not because of anything to do with him, but the two of us, we – I’ll ruin it somehow, I know I will. I’m afraid to love him again, even if I can’t help doing it. I just feel all the time like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, for us to go back to hating each other, and I – I’m not prepared for that. Not again.”

“You two never hated each other,” Lucy reminds him. “Not really. And I know it’s difficult to trust this, especially when no matter how much this Gabriel forgives you, it won’t matter to what happens at home. But that’s borrowing extra trouble, and we don’t know. I support you, all right? I love you and I’m here for you. It’s all right to let yourself love him too.”

Flynn doesn’t answer, but a sigh shudders through him from head to toe. Then he lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it, and straightens up. “I love you too,” he says. “Where’s Christian?”

“Downstairs, probably.” Lucy wonders if she should get back to slogging through the books, but she’s had enough of that for now. “At least I hope so. I’m not sure we’ve had quite enough dramatic adventures for his taste just yet.”

Flynn snorts, but they make their way to the inn’s common room, as another question occurs to Lucy. If they’re staying in Prague for any length of time, it will get cramped, not to mention expensive, to live out of an inn for weeks, and since Flynn is paying for the entire entourage, that could be an issue. Even the de Clermonts are not endlessly made of money, though Asher would not leave them under a bridge. “Are we going to take a house in town?”

“Maybe,” Flynn says. “If we’re going to be doing any entertaining, or have callers, we can’t exactly receive them here, and persons of our status would not be lingering in a common coaching inn for long. I’ll have to think of it.”

Before Lucy can ask what the Prague real estate market is like in 1590, they are interrupted by the dramatic advent of Gabriel. (Though all of his advents anywhere are dramatic, so that just goes without saying.) He bangs the door open and sashays in like Bohemia’s Next Top Model, as the other patrons turn to stare but then decide it’s better not to say anything. Gabriel flings his cloak over one shoulder, struts up to Flynn, and leans in to kiss him on both cheeks, with an expression of such immensely self-satisfied smugness that it can probably be seen from Jupiter. “Well, darling,” he says. “You have your ball.”

“My what?” Flynn looks alarmed. “A ball? Did I ask for a ball?”

Gabriel shrugs, as if to say that _someone_ asked for a ball, and by God, he has now provided it. “No better way to arrive at court and make your mark, don’t you think? Even the emperor might be obliged to appear briefly _._ And, of course, they are always _such_ fun.”

Lucy, who has less-than-enjoyable memories of the ball with the Pembrokes (though at least Gabriel will not be threatening her life at this one) isn’t sure about that, but it is true that Rudolf would have to attend, and it is the quickest way to get an introduction. “When?”

“Friday evening.” Gabriel looks sleeker than ever. “That does give us a few days to let our legend spread, so that the whole of the emperor’s court will be vying to spot us when we arrive. If we play our cards correctly, we shall have our choice of patrons.”

Flynn clears his throat. “And how exactly are you going to spread the legend?”

“What do you think?” Gabriel kisses his nose. “By being _very_ charming.”

Flynn starts to say something, seems to feel that no good can come of it, and that he will just have to shut his mouth and take his medicine. This _was_ the purpose of bringing Gabriel along, after all, though Flynn still looks vaguely disgruntled. They go up to bed with no overtly suspicious acts committed by Meg, though Lucy has kept one eye on her all evening. She is once more doubting her conclusions from earlier. Maybe it really was something else.

The next few days continue in this vein, enlivened on Thursday morning by the arrival of a letter from London. Apparently the Knights of Lazarus really are as efficient as advertised, and this ability to talk to Asher – not exactly instant messaging, but as fast as you’re going to get for the sixteenth century – is somewhat encouraging. However, they are not sure whether Asher’s news qualifies as that or not. On their advice, he has discreetly cultivated Guy Fawkes on the topic of the Prestyn family from Lancashire, and Fawkes has indeed had a thing or two to say. According to him, they were social pariahs, regarded dimly in both vampire and witch circles and never fully accepted in either, so his specific knowledge is limited. He in fact has met Henry de Prestyn on a few occasions. He seemed unfortunately unamenable to Fawkes’ favored hobbies (viz. explosives), so Fawkes dismissed him as something of a boring fellow. Why exactly do they want to know?

“He’s _alive?”_ Lucy says, floored, even as she remembers Amelie saying that her father was over a hundred years old when he was killed, and didn’t look any more than thirty. He must have been born in the 1520s or 1530s, so yes, the younger Henry de Prestyn is in fact still alive in Lancashire, despite his older self’s murder in London in 1589. If they get Asher to travel to Preston and find him, will they alter all of history so that Henry doesn’t get the idea to timewalk, isn’t killed, and isn’t made into Ashmole 782? Is that the best solution? But they’re hanging onto the manuscript as their answer to so many magical quandaries, not least the antidote for Gabriel, and if it isn’t created, the consequences will ripple through time as well. It’s the reason they met. The pages are already faded to the point that the alchemical wedding is no more than a few splashes of paint and gilting. And his death already happened. Lucy knows exactly by who, even. It’s not their fault if they don’t actively interfere, is it?

“I suppose he is, yes,” Flynn says, frowning at his father’s letter. “But since we’re still not sure how he ended up dead, aside from whatever Kit said, I’m not sure we can – ”

Lucy glances sidelong at him. She has waited patiently, and she’s not going to be insensitive about this, but since the question has just become explicit, she will have to answer it. “We do know how he ended up dead,” she says. “Gabriel told me on the – on the journey.”

Flynn looks up sharply. “He what?”

“He told me what happened.” Lucy tries to sound as casual as possible. “He’s the one who killed Henry. He wouldn’t tell me why, exactly. He asked me not to tell you, so I didn’t. I was hoping he would bring it up with you, but I – I’m not sure why he didn’t.”

Flynn still looks confused, not to mention considerably thrown. “Gabriel wouldn’t do that. He can be a hothead, but not an arrant murderer.”

“I don’t think he did it just for fun,” Lucy says. “He seemed to imply that Henry was acting bizarrely, threateningly, and it forced his hand somehow. I thought he might be trying to protect someone, and that it would be either Christian or you. As I said, I don’t know.”

“He – ” Flynn shakes his head, as if to chase out a troublesome thought like a buzzing fly. “He never mentioned it to me – well, my past self – that I can remember.”

“He wouldn’t have thought it was important,” Lucy says. “He would have had no reason to know that Henry was consequential in any way. Might have just seen him as a madman rambling in the streets and threatening his family, no reason to burden you with it. He doesn’t know what happened to Henry’s body afterward, or who might have sold him to Dee.”

“This still doesn’t – ” Flynn breaks off and paces restlessly around the room. The inn is indeed getting very cramped for everyone’s sensibilities, and he has sent Parry and Karl off to make enquiries about taking a house in town. “Why did Kit lie about it?”

“Gabriel only said that he’s fighting the right wars.” Lucy moves over and puts her hands on Flynn’s shoulder blades, which are tense and hard as marble beneath her touch. He clearly feels that the trap he keeps expecting, the catch to his miraculously restored relationship with Gabriel, is about to spring – that he can’t push at this question without endangering it, and if he doesn’t push, he might miss the key to the entire mystery. “I think Kit is still protecting Gabriel, and you, even as much of a pill as he’s been. I was hoping that Gabriel would have told you more about it, but…”

“Do you realize what this means, if it’s true?” Flynn spins around to face her so fast that Lucy takes an inadvertent step backward. “A de Clermont killed a de Prestyn. That is the reason that Ashmole 782 exists. Could that be why it’s the two of us who have to find it, why it _is_ the two of us to start with? A de Clermont and a Preston started this. A de Clermont and a Preston have to end this, to symbolically reunite what was broken. But if this whole time, Gabriel _knows_ we’ve been looking for this, why wouldn’t he – ”

“He didn’t know that Henry had been used to make Ashmole 782,” Lucy reminds him, before Flynn can spiral too anxiously off into the hinterlands. “He would have had no reason to connect it to any of this. Does your father say anything else? About Hubbard, Rittenhouse, anyone – ?”

Flynn, still clearly distracted by the Gabriel conundrum, grabs for the letter and scans it quickly. “Hubbard’s lying low. No more plays for attention, probably doesn’t want the creatures of London banding together to investigate what’s going on in his hive. Papa isn’t sure about Rittenhouse, he hasn’t caught wind of him recently. But he advises us to be vigilant, says that there were reports of strange attacks in eastern France not long after we passed through. He thinks there is definitely a chance that Rittenhouse followed us.”

Lucy looks around reflexively, as if there might be a fanged nightmare monster lurking in the corner, but nothing. She’s not eager to be chased through the streets of Prague after dark like she was in London, even if Christian might find it appropriately diverting. “If it’s _the_ David Rittenhouse from the eighteenth century, that means someone sent him after us specifically. Do you think – back in the twenty-first century, do you think that your family is… that they’re also in danger?”

Flynn snorts an utterly humorless laugh. “I’ve never thought they weren’t. What with Temple, Cahill, Emma, Keynes, and whoever else, I imagine that _Maman,_ Cecilia, Wyatt, Jiya, and Rufus have all the trouble they can deal with. I can’t think about it too much, I can’t dwell on not being able to protect my own daughter again, or I’ll go insane. I’d rather have that thing here, after us, than after her, but I don’t delude myself that it’s the only monster they can muster against the de Clermonts. If this _is_ true about Gabriel, our family is at the heart of everything the creature world fears and doesn’t understand. They were trying to destroy us before you and I left. I very much doubt that they’ve stopped.”

Lucy winces at the raw pain in his voice, the fact that he doesn’t need a reminder that no matter where or when he is, he will not be able to defend everyone he loves – and for Flynn, that is a fate worse than death. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault.” Flynn racks his hands over his face. “We need to think about these things. I just – should I confront Gabriel about this? I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing, but I don’t – I want to know.”

“Then ask him,” Lucy says. “But be careful about it. If we write back to Asher, what should we tell him to do about Henry?”

“Nothing,” Flynn says distractedly, reaching for the quill and a fresh piece of parchment. “The best thing we can do for anyone is to leave off meddling more than we already have. If Henry de Prestyn is presently alive in Lancashire, we should just bloody leave him there.”

Lucy nods her agreement and leaves him to it. She imagines that nobody needs to tell Asher to be diplomatic and discreet, and it is also useful to give Flynn a moment to collect his thoughts. The news about Gabriel has clearly rattled him, and since he is still so out of practice at dealing with anything about that relationship in a proportionate fashion, it’s best that he doesn’t burn in a hundred degrees too hot and torch it all over again. Isn’t it?

At that, Lucy struggles once again to push away that faint jealousy that she can’t help but feel, however much she doesn’t want to. She has been as supportive as she possibly can, she knows that Flynn needs this, she is as dedicated to saving Gabriel as when she made the bargain with the Goddess, but she can’t help but fear the lure of an old life. If Flynn patches everything up with Gabriel, maybe he will want to return to the way things were with them. Gabriel was his companion and his confidante for centuries. How can Lucy, a mere mortal woman that he’s known for months, compete with that depth of knowledge and affection? Maybe if they go back to that, Flynn won’t want her around anymore. Maybe she’s just a stopgap to what he really needs. She absolutely hates thinking that, having that hesitation, but she does. She knows it’s irrational, but still. She’s never been good enough for anyone, not on her own. She’s only just started to trust that it was the case for Flynn. It’s just… _hard._

Lucy doesn’t sleep much, and wakes up on Friday morning already cranky and out of sorts, which doesn’t bode well when it will be a very long night at court with the heat and noise and excessive etiquette (and need to woo various important people). The ball starts at eight, with supper first, and it will take several hours to get ready, so Lucy does not have much time in the day before she must remove to be primped and pampered. At least the permissive atmosphere of Prague extends to its fashion sensibilities, so she will not be expected to turn up in a ruff, fifty pounds of golden petticoats, and a faceful of lead makeup, and instead is able to arrange a more naturalistic look. When she sweeps downstairs like a fin-de-siècle debutante, Flynn gets a very gratifying look of total stupefaction on his face and is lost for words for a good thirty seconds. Then he bows and offers her his arm. “My lady?”

Lucy takes it, unable to resist a flourish, as they are joined by Gabriel and Christian. Gabriel is glittering in black and gold, nicely complementing Flynn’s black and silver, so they look like a pair of alchemical elements themselves. The doublets are slashed and the hose is tight, as Gabriel is clearly ensuring that all eyes will be on them when they strut in. Christian is playing things somewhat more conservative in blue and cream, which makes him look like a Renaissance angel who should be playing a lute on a painted ceiling somewhere. They do make a striking foursome, and as they climb into the carriage for the journey to the castle, Gabriel remarks breezily, “This is rather lovely, isn’t it? All of us, so familial? So cozy?”

Flynn shoots a look at him, then away. This is clearly not the time to confront Gabriel over Henry de Prestyn, but Lucy can see him wondering, all his unanswered questions and old anxieties swimming in his eyes. Then Flynn says, “It is, yes.”

Gabriel smiles affectionately at him, taking his hand, and Flynn grips back, as if he does not care about the truth of anything so much as the fact that he has this. It is a slow, bumping procession through the golden streets and across the Charles Bridge, lit with the westering sun that dazzles like a polished mirror on the Vltava. Like any city river in this era, it’s not exactly scenic, but there is something about the effervescence that makes you forget. Church bells boom across the city, crows rise cawing from the thick woods on the riverbank, and they bump through the gates and into the walled castle precinct. The unfinished spire of St Vitus towers into the candy-colored sky, casting deep shadows below, and lanterns flicker among the warrens, eerie lights in the windows. All it needs is a magical rose and some talking furniture, and it could be straight out of _Beauty and the Beast._

They pull into the line of carriages, come to a halt, open the door, and both Flynn and Gabriel offer Lucy a hand down, which she accepts. She takes their arms, gazing up at the bright-burning portico overlooked with scowling gothic statues, as Christian marches ahead like a herald. Lucy hopes she’s not being melodramatic that it feels like a hellmouth, a place where sinners enter and do not emerge unchanged. Not entirely an _abandon-all-hope-ye-who-enter-here_ situation, but still not something to take lightly. A procession of bejeweled Bohemian nobles are making their way in, the men wearing fur and gilt and feathered caps and the women with some rather daring headwear, hems edged in scarlet thread and sleeves dripping with pearls. Lucy takes a deep breath, and a better grip on the boys, and follows them in.

Her first impression is of sprawling, splendid _space._ As they step into the majestic Vladislav Hall, braided with intricate ogives and hung with rich tapestries, Lucy remembers visiting here on a crowded weekend and wondering how it looked in its heyday, full of pomp and circumstance, how that would have transformed the feeling and the function of the space. She can see it now. The walls are painted and plastered, thick with gilding, and the lights of a thousand candles flash and flitter like exotic fish. The facets of countless jewels throw dancing sparks like kaleidoscopes, and between the summer night and the press of people, it is hot enough to instantly break a sweat. The great windows that line the right-hand side of the hall are open in search of some breeze, and Lucy holds tighter to Flynn, as they have been left adrift while Gabriel forages toward the dais in hopes of securing the coveted imperial audience. That there – that has to be Rudolf II. Lucy recognizes him from the carved busts and statuaries. He is of indifferent height, with thinning brown hair that curls to a slight widow’s peak and a neat beard. The Hapsburg nose is not quite as prominent on him as others, though still noticeable, and he is dressed in sable and silk and brocade, fingers crusted with jewels, brow banded with a golden circlet instead of a heavy ceremonial crown. He also has the look of a man who would very sorely prefer to be alone in bed with a book, far away from all this mess and nonsense, and Lucy feels a brief sympathy. Relatable.

She and Flynn watch as Gabriel insinuates himself expertly through the crowd, finally attracting Rudolf’s attention. He flashes a dazzling smile that makes Flynn narrow his eyes, as if wondering just how far Gabriel’s emperor-seducing plans have progressed, and leans his elegant dark head close to Rudolf’s, whispering in his ear. Finally Rudolf nods, glances around, and that is clearly their cue. Flynn and Lucy fight through the crush, attain the dais, and sink into a deep bow and curtsy. “My brother, Your Majesty,” Gabriel says in Latin, which has apparently been decided as the most convenient lingua franca. “Sir Garcia de Clermont, Baron Clairmont, and his wife, Lady Lucy Clairmont. Late of England.”

Rudolf considers them critically, then jerks his head, giving them leave to rise, and Flynn and Lucy step forward to bow over his offered hand and kiss his ring. It is a considerable honor to be received in person by the emperor after no previous acquaintance, and Lucy can feel the attention of the entire hall beating on their backs, both curious and hostile. “Your Majesty,” she murmurs, following Flynn’s lead. “We are deeply grateful for the honor of your presence and estate.”

Rudolf nods graciously, though he is clearly still sizing them up. After all, Lucy expects that it is not usual for him to suddenly find himself in attendance at a ball conjured up on someone else’s volition, for a strange English couple he has never seen before. “And so are we pleased to receive you, my lord, my lady,” he says. He doesn’t sound like a naturally confident public speaker, though he has doubtless tried his best. “We hear that you are a devotee of the mystical arts, Sir Garcia, and that is the reason for your interest in our lovely city?”

“Ah – yes, Your Majesty, I do.” Flynn glances back over his shoulder, clearly in recognition of the fact that if they spend too much time chatting to the emperor, everyone else waiting for a chance is going to get tetchy. “Indeed, is it not so that my countryman, Edward Kelley, has achieved some prominence at your court for the greatness of his deeds? Perhaps we might be afforded an opportunity to wait upon him?”

Rudolf eyes him narrowly. Lucy wonders if this was too obvious, since Rudolf has to be aware of the drama surrounding Kelley and Dee, and might well take it into his head that they are spies for the latter. Besides, he still believes wholeheartedly in Kelley’s mystical abilities. Rudolf does not want an ambitious rival arriving to poach his pet alchemist, and the moment is briefly tense until Gabriel once more swoops in. “You must not suspect any ill of my brother, Your Majesty. He is a great admirer of Sir Edward’s work, that is all.”

Rudolf’s face relaxes somewhat, though he still looks vaguely suspicious. Being in extended proximity to Gabriel de Clermont at his most charming is something that robs any mere mortal of their critical faculties, so Lucy has to admire that he is capable of this at all. By the impatient coughs and throat-clearings from the waiting crowd, they really need to move along, so they all bow and curtsy again and are shuffled off before Rudolf has given them a proper answer either way about calling on Kelley. Not that he was likely to do so without several days of due consideration beforehand. As they pluck offered goblets from a silver tray, Lucy mutters, “How do you think that went?”

“Hard to say.” Flynn glances back at Gabriel, who is taking a more lingering farewell of Rudolf. “He didn’t say no, at least, and he clearly is… susceptible, so there’s a possibility that he could be persuaded. I’m not sure how much the ball helps, though. Rudolf hates them.”

“We could find a reason to allow him to beg off early?” Lucy gives a hovering dandy in an excessively fussy doublet the _step-along-buddy_ look common to all women at parties. She is literally standing _right_ next to her husband. “And was there any other way we were going to be assured of an introduction? A promised private meeting could have been put off indefinitely, but it would have been much harder to shirk on this.”

“True.” Flynn gives her an appraising look. “But we shouldn’t test his forbearance too much. Do you see Kelley himself anywhere around here? I could go for the jugular.”

“Metaphorically, I hope,” Lucy says, though she does not put it past Flynn to actually grab Kelley by the collar and give him a good shakedown in a dark corner. She wouldn’t object, but she doesn’t want him to get into trouble. “Do you think there’s any chance of talking to Rudolf again tonight, or could we just – ?”

“We only just arrived and were personally received by the emperor,” Flynn says, reading her mind. “It would be the height of rudeness to turn straight around and leave. So I’m afraid we’re stuck with staying the rest of the night anyway. Go and talk to as many people as you can. You never know who might know something interesting. I’ll do the same.”

Lucy muffles a groan, but does her best to buck up, pasting a smile on her face and foraging off into the crowd. The language barrier is a bit of an issue, since most of the imperial aristocracy speak German rather than Czech, or have been raised at other royal courts across Europe, and Lucy knows less German than she should. Many of them also speak French, though, and a few have some scattered words of English, so she flirts and fans and swans her way through the endless masses with a sleek composure that she far from actually feels. They are interrupted to be called into supper, retreating into the antechambers painted with colored heraldry on the ceilings, where tables are laid among several rooms. Lucy finds herself sitting next to none other than Karl Widemann, who looks at her in some surprise. “Mistress – Flynn? Was that not the name you gave me at the shop?”

“Er, yes.” Lucy can’t be sure if he heard their introduction to Rudolf as not that, and doesn’t want to give the game away. “How do you do this evening, Herr Widemann?”

“Very well, mistress, very well indeed.” Widemann lifts his goblet. “How did your husband like his alchemical books?”

“They were most helpful, we thank you kindly.” Lucy wonders if it’s too late to switch seat partners, or if she is going to spend the entire meal thinking of clever deflections to his questions. “Is your master intending to attend tonight, Herr Widemann?”

“Sir Edward is greatly consumed by the cares of his art, and does not have the time for frivolous entertainments. Though perhaps he may arrive later, to please the emperor.” Widemann is looking at her closely. “Do you have some particular interest, madam?”

“Only that he is a great alchemist,” Lucy says, hopefully not too simperingly. “And if he is truly able to converse with angels, to speak their very tongue, then – ”

“Sir Edward knows many dread and wonderful secrets of the arcane arts,” Widemann says. “And as I am his supplier in these matters, mistress, and as you clearly know something of it, could you give me the names of any men in England who could sell such books? Perhaps, say, Dr. John Dee?”

Lucy keeps her face as still as she can. Widemann has clearly reached the same conclusion that she suspected of Rudolf, that they are here as spies and agents for Dee, and after all, he is not entirely wrong. “My husband and I are not here on Dr. Dee’s behalf, Herr Widemann.”

“Are you not?” The German considers her with pale, unreadable blue eyes. “Your reception at court seems quite fortuitous for a pair of anonymous English gentry otherwise. Or perhaps you have some other name, that I was not earlier privileged to hear?”

Lucy hesitates. Widemann isn’t an enemy, per se, but he’s not a friend either, and his chief interest lies with Kelley, who will not take well to any attempts to filch Ashmole 782 out from beneath his nose. “We are not here for Dee,” she says again, as if repetition will make it sound more trustworthy. “We have… other interests.” Oh, what the _hell_. If anyone will know anything about this, it is a man who buys and sells esoteric manuscripts and is connected to the magical book trade across Europe. “What do you know about the use of human skin in the bindings of certain works of… particular importance?”

Widemann stares at her. “That is a gruesome question for a lady at any hour, madam. Particularly at suppertime.”

“Perhaps.” Since everyone has been served and Rudolf has started to eat, this is a sign that everyone else can as well, and Lucy lifts the knife and two-pronged pewter fork. “Is it a common substance? One would hope not.”

“Indeed.” Widemann shudders. “It is not a common substance at all, thanks be to God. Though not completely unknown, I will grant you. Why do you ask?”

“I have heard of a few books of particular power that were said to be clad in skin.” Lucy takes a decorous bite. If she’s managing to frighten Widemann into thinking that she’s a stone cold bitch not to be trifled with, she won’t object. “And if we were speaking of suppliers in London, is there anyone you know who might provide such a thing?”

“I hope you do not mean to imply that I consort with villains and grave robbers, madam,” Widemann says, rather stiffly. “Or that I myself would flay the hide from a – ”

“Who sold a body to Dr. Dee?” Lucy is out of patience with beating around the bush. She reaches forward and grabs Widemann’s arm as he is taking a drink, causing him to choke on his wine and put his goblet down hastily. “Surely you or your master would be interested in that news, if it meant embarrassment for Dee, or further question of his methods?”

Widemann looks as if he’s not the only one wondering if the seating arrangements can be altered at this late hour. He seems to be resisting an urge to back away. Let him be terrified, Lucy thinks. She is the white queen, she is the pinnacle of all their alchemical art, and she has questions that she goddamn well intends to get answered. After an intimidated silence, Widemann says, “We did hear that Dee had acquired a certain body last year, and used the skin in the completion of his book. He had bought it in London, from – ”

“Who?” Lucy maintains direct, level eye contact. “Who sold it to him?”

“A Father Andrew Hubbard, my lady.” Widemann looks as if it might be against his better judgment to answer, but he’s too scared not to. He lowers his voice. “A _vampire.”_

Oh, son of a bitch. That has to be it, the missing piece in Henry de Prestyn’s death – well, one of them anyway. It is no secret that Hubbard and the de Clermonts have bad blood, and if one of the hive stumbled on Henry’s corpse and was initially planning to blackmail Gabriel over it, that plan could have changed on realizing its value. Hubbard also doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who is big on encouraging the news of interspecies relationships and mixed-blood creatures, and arranging to dispose of Henry discreetly for a large sum would have solved several problems for him at once. No wonder he’s had such a bug up his ass about the de Clermonts, though. He had the perfect opportunity to turn them in and get them into all sorts of trouble, but couldn’t do it without breaking the cardinal rule: never admit to the government what you are. Couldn’t think of any way to spin it without implicating himself and threatening the safety of his own hive. Or maybe he doesn’t know that it was Gabriel himself who killed Henry, since that doesn’t seem like a blackmail opportunity that he would let pass him by. But after the whole drama about how they can’t go after Hubbard and Rittenhouse without threatening the fragile peace of the London creature world –

“Ah,” Lucy says, unsure how Mistress Flynn would react to the news of vampires – swoon away in the figgy pudding? She doubts Widemann would buy a swoon from her at this point, anyway. If he and Kelley know the identity of Dee’s supplier, does that mean they have sounded Hubbard out for the possibility of another one? Think that he’s running some sort of organized racket to kill half-bloods and sell them for parts? Hubbard is distasteful in many ways, but even Lucy doesn’t think he’d go that far. Henry was an accident, as far as anyone knows. He just happened to be in a convenient position to profit.

“Indeed.” Widemann sits back, eyeing her warily. “Do not fraternize with the vampires, madam. They will drain you dry in all the ways that God can number.”

Lucy, who is fraternizing with several vampires (particularly one) on a regular basis, makes a noncommittal noise, and conversation rather withers on the vine after that. Once the several courses of supper are finished, Rudolf stands, so does everyone else, and they return to Vladislav Hall, which has had the tables and sideboards cleared away in expectation of dancing. Musicians strike up a reel, and the floor turns into a whirl of brilliant fabrics, flashing jewels, and spinning couples.

Lucy is almost lost in the chaos, since there are far more people here than at the Pembrokes’ ball, and it feels approximately twice as hot. She dances with a stout Bohemian nobleman who smells strongly of feet, and is relieved that there does not seem to be the same expectation of kissing partners as there is in England. She has long since lost sight of Flynn, Gabriel, or Christian, though she finally spots Flynn dignifiedly partnering an elderly doyenne whose pointed cap barely reaches his chin. Gabriel is once more orbiting around the emperor, and Christian is out of sight. She tries not to worry. They already have enough apron strings tied to him, they should probably just let him get his adventure over with.

The partners of the dance once more change, and to her considerable surprise, Lucy finds herself face to face with Rudolf. They look at each other, bow and curtsy as the music starts again, and Lucy is taken in hand by the Holy Roman Emperor. “Lady Clairmont,” he says in her ear. He sounds like a childhood stammerer who has struggled to repress it, and she feels another vague sympathy that he has been forced into a role he is clearly so ill-suited for. “We have heard much of you this evening.”

“Have you, Your Majesty?” Lucy is not the most coordinated person in the best of times, and she is focused on not stepping on said Holy Roman Emperor’s feet. They are also speaking Latin, which takes extra concentration. She can _read_ it, but her opportunities for casual conversation have obviously been limited (though she could always practice with Gabriel). “Has my husband’s brother said good, I hope, and not ill?”

“Your husband’s brother is a charming man.” Rudolf glances inadvertently in Gabriel’s direction. Ignoring the crowd of hopeful women eager for a turn, Gabriel is now dancing with Flynn, the two of them cutting a broad swath through the lesser (and tinier) mortals that surround them. “He says much, and indeed, much of it is fair of you. But a man who sups too unquestioningly on blandishments and flattery will live to regret the taste.”

Lucy glances at him with reluctant acknowledgment of this quiet shrewdness; they’ve basically assumed that they can cozen and manipulate Rudolf into doing whatever they want, which in retrospect definitely seems more than a little arrogant. She meets Rudolf’s gaze as levelly as she can. “What exactly were you wondering about me, Your Majesty?”

“Many things,” Rudolf says, as he spins her daintily by the hand. “Not least your actual purpose in coming to our court. We do not believe it is merely for your husband’s interests. Earlier he asked in a most forward fashion after Sir Edward. What is their connection?”

“He is only an admirer, as he said.” Lucy thinks hard, trying to guess what Rudolf might be the most concerned about. “He has no purpose to take him back to England, or steal his secrets.” Well, aside from one secret, that is. One book. No big deal, minor thing.

“We will not have our pocket picked,” Rudolf says. “Nor our own courtiers stolen away. Is that so, Lady Clairmont?”

“We only wish to speak to him.” Lucy isn’t sure if Rudolf is expecting her to beg, or plead, or offer a variety of other favors in exchange for the privilege. Dealing with Elizabeth has given her some practice in massaging fragile royal egos, but this is different. “Does your majesty see any way such a small courtesy could be arranged?”

“If we are frank, we do not trust the pair of you, But Lord Gabriel has pled prettily for your good nature, and…” Rudolf glances at the handsome vampire again. It’s clear that he is far from immune, and he can be tempted into idealistic folly; he’s not exactly a hard-nosed _realpolitiker_ or cynical mastermind, as his disastrous Ottoman wars will show. “We will consider it, my lady. So long as no strife becomes ourselves or Sir Edward in the doing.”

Strife seems to become everyone these days, and Lucy’s hands ache with the urge to take Rudolf by the shoulders and shake him until he says yes, but that would definitely backfire. This seems to be as good as she is going to get, and when the dance comes to a close, she and Rudolf once more exchange courtesies and part ways. Lucy is desperately thirsty and needs some air, and her back aches. She darts to the edge of the crowd and into the cooler passages at the back of the hall, which lead into darkened state rooms. Some of the noise fades behind her as she reaches an airy room that overlooks the headland on which the castle is built, the city of Prague spread out on the hills below. There is an open window in here, it looks like a chancellery, and to her mingled surprise and disquiet, Lucy realizes that this is the famous Defenestration Window where two counts and a secretary were chucked out on the morning of May 23, 1618, setting off the Thirty Years’ War. She thought it was funny when she visited the modern castle, but now the sight of it unnerves her. She turns, and –

Just then, a shadow moves, an arm reaches out, and the door slams loud enough to sound like a shot in the stillness. Lucy jumps around as a figure steps out, glances her up and down with a thorough and far-from-friendly air, and nods. “Ah, yes,” he says, in English. “I thought it must be thou, the strange beldam, the white woman. I hath been waiting long in hopes of speech, and yet you throw yourself, small bird, so willingly into mine own nest. It will make this much the easier.”

Lucy stares at him. She doesn’t need to ask who he is, though the woodcuts she’s seen don’t bear much resemblance. He’s not much older than her, just thirty-five, though his date of birth, along with much else about the man, remains uncertain. She inclines her head, though her nervous knees are briefly inclined to curtsy. “Sir Edward, forgive me. I had not meant to disturb – disturb your work.”

“So thou dost know me.” Kelley seems equally unsurprised. “I hath already heard thy tale. Gave yourself to my assistant as Mistress Flynn, and to the gracious emperor as Lady Clairmont. Which is the true name, madam? I wager that I can guess. The de Clermonts of France are not so unknown as that to mine eye, and come here from London.”

Lucy opens her mouth, then shuts it. Kelley seems to have crossed the floor without visibly moving, a sinuous glide as if his black robe conceals wheels instead of feet, and he is closer to her than she would like. Lucy feels her back hit the windowsill, and raises her hands again, preparing to use magic to defend herself. Kelley, however, looks avidly eager, as if he was hoping for this. From somewhere about his person he produces a small glass vial, and holds it up. “Please,” he says. “I would be obliged.”

Lucy stares at him. All that practice with Lady Beaton to create her familiar, the firedragon, seems designed for situations like this, but what if Kelley captures it and uses it to coerce her somehow? He clearly has access to just enough real magic to make him very dangerous, he presently possesses Ashmole 782, and he has to know or guess something about her particularly symbiotic relationship to the book. If he wants her to use magic or conjure the familiar, she probably shouldn’t, but what then should she –

“I see no need for us to be enemies, thee and I,” Kelley goes on, when Lucy makes no move to contribute to the conversation. “So long as thou strictly bide by what I say, and attempt never in any manner to cross it. You will stay away from my house, madam, and my books, and my place at the emperor’s court, and my secretary, and everything else that I value and do good dealings upon. You will say no word of this to John Dee, in letter or in person, nor bear any tale to anyone that could reflect poorly on my doings here. Indeed, if anyone should ask, there is no greater alchemist in Europe than Master Edward Kelley, and his work the truest pursuit of the art. If you do not – ”

He pauses for effect, though it would be hard for him to one-up the threat that Gabriel delivered to Lucy at the Pembrokes’ ball; clearly whenever she goes to one of these damn things, someone threatens to kill her in inventively colorful Elizabethan ways. She isn’t intimidated by Kelley, exactly, but she is not taking him lightly either. They continue to stare at each other, the open window at her back, as the night breeze pulls giddily at her hair and the lace of her sleeves. Then Kelley reaches into his robe, produces a twist of sulfur, and lights it without a match or brazier. He tosses it onto her skirt, where it hisses and leaves a small burned spot as Lucy brushes it hastily off, stamping it out underfoot before it can set the floorboards alight. “Am I,” he says, each word coldly and carefully enunciated, “quite clear in my demands, Lady Clairmont?”

Lucy continues to stare at him. It is clear that the plan of trying to get Rudolf to approve an audience with Kelley has just gone up in possibly-literal flames, if he has made clear that he will have absolutely nothing to do with them. There is no chance of getting to Ashmole 782 through the sedate diplomatic channels, in other words, and thus their entire purpose in Prague has to be rethought. They aren’t going to leave without it, but if is, in fact, a question of breaking into his house to outright steal it, that – to say the least – complicates things a bit.

When she doesn’t answer, Kelley lights another sulfur twist and throws it on her harder, scorching her bare skin, and grabs her with the other hand, shoving her up against the window and almost over. Lucy screams as the world tilts out from under her, and scrabbles at him – bad idea or otherwise, she has no choice but to use magic if she doesn’t want to make the events of 1618 become, technically, the _third_ Defenestration. But just as she is about to unleash the firedragon, she hears the door bang open, and the next instant, Kelley is ripped off her hard enough to send him flying. He hits the wall and slides down it, skullcap askew, as two strong hands grab Lucy and pull her sharply back inside. For an instant she assumes it’s Flynn, then in the next Gabriel, but it’s neither. It’s Christian, and he looks quite different from how she has ever seen him before. He is so easy-going, so angelic, so kind and caring and welcoming to everyone, that you almost forget he is not only a vampire, but a scion of the notorious de Clermonts, the most feared supernatural warriors in history. There is no chance of forgetting that now. His face is pale and cold and hard as diamond, his eyes burning blue fire, and he sounds very much like his father at his most terrifying as he demands, “Did that bastard hurt you?”

“I – no. No, I’m all right.” Lucy does want to put some space between her and the window, and they take several steps away. She discovers that she is shaking, which is annoying, and looks around to make sure that the other sulfur twist is out. “He was just – ”

Christian wheels on the groaning Kelley. “I would not,” he growls. “What means did you have on her, you – ”

“Christian,” Lucy says in an undertone. “Christian, that’s – ”

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” Kelley says unctuously, raising both hands in preparation for any renewed attack. “I did not realize that your – ?”

“My son,” Lucy says, as Christian links his arm protectively through hers as if to say yes, that is goddamn correct. “My son naturally would take offense to your rough and ungallant treatment of me, Master Kelley. So if you thought I would be – ”

It’s hard to say whose face undergoes more of a journey at this: Christian’s, realizing that the blackguard he just ripped off her is in fact the alchemist they have been looking for the whole time, or Kelley’s. Lucy can’t place it, but it frightens her far more than any of his threats and physical violence. Suddenly it strikes her that Kelley knows she’s a witch, and that her husband is a vampire. If Christian is in fact their son, that means he’s a Bright Born, the same kind of creature as Henry de Prestyn. If one hide made such a magical book as Ashmole 782, what might a _second_ do? It was clear in Lucy’s conversation with Widemann that Kelley knows about that, that Dee was reduced to purchasing an opportunely murdered body out of a gutter, but now here his own chance is, standing right in front of him. Lucy is struck by a sickening conviction that she should not have said that, and puts her arm in front of Christian, trying to back them out of the room. “Good night,” she says, as icily as humanely possible. “Rest assured that we will not be troubling your lordship with a call.”

“What was that?” Christian says, the instant the door has shut behind them. “What does he – Aunt Lucy, you’re shaking. Are you – if he hurt you, I swear I’ll – ”

“I’m fine,” Lucy says, which is decidedly not at all how she feels. They’re going to have to steal Ashmole 782 outright, that much is certain, and she may have just put Christian in real danger of being turned into the sequel. She has to warn Flynn and Gabriel immediately, and maybe send Christian out of Prague. But would that keep him safe, especially when he was so keen on coming here? They have been trying to think of a way to save him, not kill him again. “I think we should find your father and your uncle and get out of here.”

She means from the castle, from the ball, from tonight, from everything they can escape. But she pauses briefly at a window, gazing out at the rising moon. It covers the city in a glow of bone and porcelain, of shadows and stillness, and it blots out the fading stars. As ever, the sight is unbelievably lovely. And yet, for all of Prague’s beauty and magic and mystery, for all its gold and gilding, Lucy cannot escape the feeling that now, for all of them, it is a cage.


	14. Flesh and Bone

It is very late by the time they get back to the inn. The streets are quiet, except for the squabbling of stray animals and the occasional window opening for a voice to shout sleepy curses in Czech at the carriage as it rolls past. Lucy and Christian are still on edge, as they didn’t feel that they could explain what happened with Kelley. For one thing, it comes with a high risk of Flynn, Gabriel, or both causing a scene, and if they _are_ going to be forced into grand theft larceny, they need to stay out of prison long enough to plan it. They managed not to run out, but by midnight, Rudolf had clearly had enough, the footmen were discreetly encouraging the glitterati to be on their way, and Lucy’s surprised that the coach has not turned back into a pumpkin. The spot on her collarbone where the sulfur match burned her is throbbing, and her feet ache. Christian keeps glancing at her surreptitiously, clearly worried, and Lucy shakes her head minutely. Not until they have a door that closes and locks.

They step down and make their way inside. Lucy mostly keeps it together up the stairs, but her legs give out on the last bit, and Flynn catches her in a flash as she stumbles. “Lucy?” he says, half-carrying her over the threshold and into their room. _“Moja ljubav,_ what’s wrong?”

Lucy sits down heavily on the bed, her hair coming loose in tangles from its elaborate pins. “I need something to drink.”

Flynn immediately procures a goblet of cool water from nowhere, and sits beside her, watching her sip it. “I could tell something was up on the way home. Your heart is going crazy, you smell… what happened at the ball? Did something – Lucy, what’s this?”

He hovers one long finger over the burn mark on her chest. When he looks up, his eyes are black, and his voice is a snarl. _“Who did this?”_

“Kelley.” Lucy knew he wasn’t going to take this well, but she reaches out, grabbing Flynn’s wrist. “Edward Kelley. I met him in the chancellery – I went to get some air, and he was there, he must have been working late. He told us to stay away from everything, his house and his books, and he was threatening me when Christian caught him. I said that he was my son, but Kelley knows that I’m a witch and you’re a vampire, so now he thinks – ”

She doesn’t think she’s making any sense, rambling and talking over herself, more upset now than when it was happening, and Flynn kneels in front of her, then takes hold of her shoulders, gripping her ferociously. “Jesus,” he says, stunned. “Lucy, I didn’t – why didn’t you say something back at the castle? I would have torn his spine out through his stomach.”

“That’s why I didn’t.” Lucy cups his face in her hands, trying to get him to focus. “Garcia, listen to me. Believe me, I’m not protecting Kelley. But if we’re going to have to execute some kind of _Ocean’s Eleven_ caper to get Ashmole 782, we can’t do it with you in a dungeon for murdering the emperor’s favorite alchemist.”

“I could escape,” Flynn says stubbornly – which, in Lucy’s opinion, feels like missing the point. “You said – Christian? What did he – is he all right?”

“He’s fine.” Lucy understands why Flynn and Gabriel worry so much about Christian and try to keep him away from anything remotely dangerous, she does. But she also has a feeling that they see him as a perpetual child, when he’s not, and perhaps it is that overprotectiveness which has left him so restless and eager for a proper dust-up, to stretch his wings and try his luck. “He took care of Kelley without a problem. It’s just like I said – Kelley thinks that Christian is a Bright Born, the same kind of creature as Henry de Prestyn. I know he does, I could see it in his eyes. So he thinks Christian’s hide could be just as powerful as Henry’s, and if he wants his very own book of magic – ”

“Shit,” Flynn says, turning paler than usual. “So he wants to kill Christian and skin him for vellum. Obviously we would never let that happen, and I’d like to see one human outmatch three vampires, but Kelley has powers, associates, things we don’t know about. _And_ he has Ashmole 782. If there’s any kind of spell in there for weakening or unmaking creatures – ”

“That was why Benjamin Cahill wanted it,” Lucy says, flashing back to her first conversation with the Congregation witch in Oxford. “He thought there was something in it that could be used to destroy vampires. That if it was the secret of our origins, it was also the secret of our endings. I’m sure he wanted to get rid of the other creatures, or at least to get witches to rule over them and be able to do what they wanted, whenever they wanted. If Kelley does know anything like that, then yes. He has a real chance of hurting Christian, if he got him.”

“We won’t let him,” Flynn says. “We won’t let him do that. Does Gabriel know?”

“Not unless Christian said something, and I don’t think he made the connection.” Lucy hesitates. “Garcia, should we tell him?”

Flynn’s eyes meet hers, with the same agonized question in them. They are clearly not going to keep Gabriel in the dark about the existence of a credible threat to his beloved son, but Gabriel has not been fully honest with them about Henry, despite repeated opportunities, and this skates perilously close to the topic of Christian’s fate in the future. After a pause, Flynn says, “I suppose we have to, don’t we? Hold on.”

With that, he springs to his feet and strides out, as Lucy wonders if she’s up to having this conversation _now._ They’ll rouse the inn if they aren’t careful, and she can’t help but think of Meg, who could be lying awake and listening through the wall. Besides, while she is more or less confident that she can restrain Flynn himself from doing something rash, she is far less sure of her control over Gabriel. If he storms out into the midnight streets determined to make Kelley’s head roll, they will have a very hard time stopping him. Besides, calm and reasoned decisions based on the facts haven’t exactly been Gabriel’s métier. Is this just going to –

Lucy’s worried preoccupations are then interrupted by the return of Flynn and Gabriel. Gabriel looks as if he was in the middle of changing for sleep, wearing just his blouson white shirt and breeches like a romance-novel cover model. Nonetheless, the basilisk stare he turns on Lucy is anything but dreamy. “What’s this? What happened tonight?”

Unsure if she wants to explain it in detail all over again, Lucy cuts to the chase. “I met Edward Kelley in the chancellery. There was a situation, he threatened me, but Christian handled it. Except now Kelley thinks that Christian is a Bright Born, like Henry de Prestyn. A witch-vampire hybrid whose skin has considerable powers, and he wants to kill him for it.”

She gazes directly into Gabriel’s eyes as she says this, since he, after all, is the one who killed Henry, and has been consistently evasive as to why. He flinches, almost imperceptibly, and turns away. Flynn glances between Gabriel and Lucy, a plea in his eyes, but doesn’t say anything. There is a rather nasty silence. Then Gabriel spits, “Clearly we will not stand for this.”

“Of course not.” Flynn has been forced into the role of peacemaker and conciliator, which is not something he naturally does. He reaches out, grabbing his brother’s arm, and pulls Gabriel around to look at him. “We won’t, do you hear me? We will not, we will _not._ We would never. We can’t – not with Christian. Not again.”

At that, he bites his tongue so hard that Lucy can hear his jaw click, but too late. Gabriel rears back like a cobra. “What do you mean, _again?”_

“It – I – nothing. I misspoke, I promise.” Flynn grabs Gabriel’s other arm, restraining him as much as comforting him, and the veins on Gabriel’s neck stand out. “Gabriel, _moje srce,_ it’s nothing, all right? It’s nothing.”

This is the only thing he can say, the only way to prevent more kindling from being tossed on the fire, but Lucy can see a piece of his soul visibly crumble at being forced to explicitly lie about this. Gabriel breathes like a tempest through his nose, fangs bared, eyes blacker than Flynn’s, still fighting a clear impulse to burst out and hunt down Kelley in whatever foul den he has weaseled into. It is a predator’s uncontrollable instinct, the first time Lucy has really seen either of the de Clermonts on the very edge of their finely honed manners and control of their more animalistic urges, and it frightens her. Flynn holds him harder, pressing his mouth to Gabriel’s ear and whispering something in a language that Lucy doesn’t understand. The last part, however, she does. “No,” Flynn says. “No, no, not now, no.”

After an extremely tense few moments, Gabriel shakes his head and wrestles himself back to sense. He steps away from Flynn and speaks with too-precise crispness, as if to assure Lucy that the lapse has been managed. “Thank you for informing me of this, my dear. I had a feeling that Kelley was liable to be a villain, and I cannot say I am greatly surprised to have it confirmed. But we do not need to fret overmuch about what one greedy little human can muster against us. One of us could squash him like a fly.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t.” Lucy feels as if she may spend a lot of time in the near future repeating this, in hopes it might actually sink in at some point. “At least not until we have Ashmole 782. And we’re clearly not getting hold of that without some kind of trick, and we _did_ say that we couldn’t come here and start a war. If you kill Kelley – ”

“He threatened my son.” Gabriel’s voice is tight. “According to you, he means to kill and skin him. What do you expect me to do, send him a rude note?”

“Will you _listen_ to me?” Lucy snaps. “He threatened me, he nearly threw me out the window, I promise this is not some matter of protecting him or insipid morality or whatever else. But it has never been more important that we get Ashmole 782, and if we leave Prague in flames, it will create even more consequences that you, your father, and your Garcia will have to deal with. So if you storm off now and try something idiotic and destroy our chances for doing anything we goddamn need to, I swear, I _will_ kill you myself.”

There is a pause. The look in Gabriel’s eye is distinctly reminiscent of the one he wore after she shouted at him in Sept-Tours, recognizing that very few creatures have the backbone to confront him directly, and he seems impressed more than ruffled. After another moment, he inclines his head. “Of course, sweet sister, you have thought this through with somewhat cooler blood than we have. But you cannot advocate that we sit dumbly and wait for Kelley to prosecute his evil designs upon us first.”

“Obviously not.” Lucy gets to her feet, pacing across the floorboards, and comes to a halt across from Gabriel, lifting her chin to look into his eyes. “We will be careful, we will warn Christian to keep an eye out for him, and we’ll do everything else we can to get Ashmole 782 as quickly as possible. But both of you – I don’t think you should coddle Christian over this, all right? You need to trust him to take care of himself. He doesn’t need you hovering every minute, and I honestly think it’ll make him more determined to run off alone if you do. He’s a grown man, he’s over seven hundred years old, and he had no problem with Kelley back there. He’s not – he’s not a child. He’s not helpless.”

Gabriel and Flynn exchange a look. Between Agnes with Jack and now this, Lucy seems to be giving a lot of parenting advice where she does not necessarily feel qualified to do so. But she knows how frustrated she got with Denise and Michelle’s well-meant but suffocating attempts when she was a teenager, and how it drove her further away from the witches and the community she was supposed to belong to, rather than closer. She is well aware that she will not be forgiven if her advice to back off is what gets Christian hurt, but still.

“Christian is _my_ son,” Gabriel says again, emphatically. “I will continue to decide what is best for him, my lady. But I thank you, sincerely, for your concern.”

Lucy can tell by that stiff _my lady,_ rather than _sister_ or _my dear,_ that she’s back to arm’s length with Gabriel – though honestly, she’s not sure that she’s ever any closer. She can tell that he’s making a real effort to get along with her, that he does like her a little, and is impressed with her chutzpah. Yet her emotional relevance to him remains a corollary of her importance to Flynn, and Gabriel loves Flynn too much to hurt anything that he cherishes, but that doesn’t mean that he entirely welcomes her presence and her hold on Garcia. At that, Lucy feels an unexpected pang of missing the Gabriel that they left in the twenty-first century. He could also be a handful, to say the least, but she had some assurance that he saw and cared for her as her own person, and not just as a manifestation of the trouble, danger, and disorder that his world has been plunged into. She reminds herself that it’s not this Gabriel’s fault, that he’s handling it like anyone would (if with two hundred percent the necessary drama, because _Gabriel_ ), but she struggles with the frustration. They are trying to warn him. They are trying to stop his greatest tragedy. Can’t he just _listen?_

Flynn glances between them, as if trying to defuse the unspoken conflict. Then he clears his throat. “Gabriel, you know we – we do all want what’s best for Christian. Truly. Lucy is just trying to help.”

Gabriel considers that, then smiles. It looks painful, as if he’s trying to remember all the progress they have made and does not want to knock it aside now. But none of them can forget that _again_ hanging in the air, the poisoned promise of something that they dare not broach, and the fact that Gabriel, clever as he is, must have pieced together that they know something unspeakable about Christian’s future. He’s not going to dig now, because he can’t stand to, but the subject is not resolved, and the air remains unsettled. Then he rubs both hands over his face and nods. “Aye, of course. It was good of you to say so. Shall you warn Christian of this, then? I am afraid he may think it rather glamorous if it came from me.”

“I’ll do my best.” Surprising herself as much as him, Lucy puts her own hand on Gabriel’s arm, trying to offer what comfort she can. “I promise.”

Gabriel’s eyes flick down to it. For all his blithely casual offers to sleep with her when they first met, and his careless playboy persona in general, he does not appear to know what to do with this. He coughs, gingerly removes it with two fingers as if it is something contaminated and dangerous, and offers half a bow. Then with that, he shows himself out. The door closes behind him, and silence falls twice as thick as before.

“Well,” Lucy says at last, hollowly. “I can’t help but feel like that was a disaster.”

“It was my fault.” Flynn reaches out to take her in his arms, as she tucks her head beneath his chin and buries her face in his collarbone. “I was the one who – I shouldn’t have said that.”

Lucy doesn’t answer, though she utters a noncommittal hum into the hollow of his throat. The suicidal idea of just telling Gabriel has occurred to her, have it out in the open and let the chips fall where they may, but she can’t deal with anything else on that front right now, cowardly as it is. They have enough going on, she’s the one who keeps uttering dire warnings that they can’t just throw Kelley out his own window, and besides, they’re going to save Christian anyway, so what does it matter? They’ll bring him back to the real Gabriel, they have to. That is what is ultimately the most important. None of this is ideal, or what anyone wants, but they are stuck in an impossible situation. They have to make choices, unenviable as they may be, about containing the damage, the bigger picture, and the long game. This will blow over in a few days, once they’ve dealt with this. It has to.

Nonetheless, Lucy still can’t get to sleep, tired as she is, and Flynn finally rolls her over onto her back, slides down between her legs, and sets to work, slow and deep and thorough, until her hips wrench and her back arches and she clutches at his hair, gasping, as the white heat of release rushes through her. He lifts his head, and she pulls him up to properly kiss her, wet and musky on her mouth, his stubble scratching her chin. Some of the accumulated stress drains out of her, and she nuzzles close to him as he wraps both arms around her, pulling her against him like a small sailboat sheltering in the lee of a mighty cliff. “Sleep, _moja ljubav,”_ he says in her ear, low and rumbling. “I’m here.”

Lucy wraps her hand around the firmness of his forearm, anchoring herself, and follows his advice. When she opens her eyes again, it’s morning, and she manages to get herself up, dressed, and into the common room for breakfast, where Parry and Karl are presenting the results of their house-hunting to Flynn. He seems inclined to a townhouse by the Karolinum, the building that serves as the heart of the Univerzita Karlova, Charles University. It is just a few minutes north of here, on the other side of the town square, and will not be much trouble to move to – besides, having the Univerzita at hand cannot hurt. Its reputation and resources took a hit during the Bohemian wars of religion, but it is reviving under Rudolf’s regime, and Lucy, nerdy academic that she is, will never complain about getting to hang out in a gorgeous medieval university. It is decided that they will take it, and Flynn sends Parry and Karl back out, along with one of the innkeeper’s sons to serve as translator, to finalize the transaction. Everyone else is obliged to get packed up and prepared to move, and by the time the grooms return with the happy news that the place is theirs, it is an only mildly chaotic endeavor to transport everyone approximately three hundred meters up the street. As the trunks and luggage are being hauled up the steps, Lucy plucks at Christian’s sleeve. “One minute.”

“What is it, Aunt Lucy?” Christian glances at her with the solicitous expression he has been wearing, as if to ask whether she wants him to serve as her personal bodyguard from now on. “Did you – have you seen something else – ?”

“No,” Lucy says. “It’s not me that I’m worried about. Yesterday, when I told Kelley that you were my son. He interpreted it to mean that you’re a special creature, with particular powers, and he wants to kill you for it.”

Christian looks startled, but not particularly alarmed. “It was you he was trying to throw out the window, Aunt Lucy,” he says, as if wondering if she needs her memory jogged. “And Kelley is a human. I don’t think he can do anything to me.”

“I hope not.” Lucy pulls him aside as Karl plows through with trunk in hand. “But I can’t be sure. Just be careful, all right? Tell me if you see anything strange, or your father and your uncle.”

“I can manage,” Christian insists, and Lucy isn’t sure if she should argue. After all, she was the one saying last night that they should trust him to do it. “I thank you for the warning, but I still feel that it is you in the greater danger. Shall I set forth and see what he is doing, the villain? I could find his house again, and – ”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lucy says hastily, as they make their way into the house. It smells like sawdust and plaster, has a few pieces of furniture but not many, and this gives it an odd, piebald look, like a diorama at a museum that is in the process of renovation. Sunlight slants through diamonds of lime glass, and the beamed ceilings, while comfortably admitting most members of the party, mean that Flynn and Gabriel will have to watch their heads. “We’ll think of something, some kind of plan, as to how we’re going to do that. Don’t go wandering off on your own in the meantime, all right? And that goes for everyone. Kelley knows we’re here now, and if he sees any of us near his house or the castle, it’s going to make it harder.”

Christian agrees, though still with a dubious look, and Lucy herself feels the pang of having a child (of sorts) who just will not listen to the solid and seasoned life advice you really are _trying_ to give them. The evening is spent unpacking, they all fall into bed and sleep like logs and nearly miss church on Sunday, and on Monday morning, Lucy decides to pay a visit to the Univerzita. As a woman, she is unlikely to be admitted alone, so to kill several birds with one stone, she deputes Christian to accompany her. If Christian is going, Jack wants to come too, and Lucy, feeling like a mother duck who keeps inadvertently collecting extra ducklings, agrees. Flynn and Gabriel have decided on some errand that they are being unnecessarily mysterious about, which Lucy cannot help but feel probably involves some element of criminality, and frankly, she would rather not know. She rolls her eyes, informs the boys that they had better not get arrested (at which they look too surprised at the very idea to be convincing) and sets out.

It takes the usual runaround to get in, but at last, Lucy is allowed to enter and even to consult the library, though the rector insists that she must be brief. It would help if she knew exactly what she was looking for, apart from a handbook on how to steal a priceless alchemical manuscript from a local dickweed, but her thoughts on that and most other topics are driven out when she steps inside. The reading room has a feeling of impossible space and light and grandeur, the walls decorated with painted friezes and tiled mosaics, and it casts shadows of all colors, secret whispering passageways down dark side aisles. Odd devices stand in glass cases, looking like the sort of thing that Harry Potter would give his eyeteeth to get hold of. The place is lilac and gold and violet and pearl and onyx, and smells of dust and polish and that thing she forgot last Thursday, flickering just out of reach or sight, enticing her to come remember. Codices and scrolls and vast leather books with tarnished clasps are stacked up a dozen high, and black-robed scholars huddle in their carrels, scribbling away with ink and parchment and casting the ubiquitous death glares of academic disapproval as Lucy, Christian, and Jack pass by. For his part, the latter – a scruffy street child from London who has never seen such a place in his life – looks like he is itching to steal anything he can get his hands on, and Lucy gives him a very stern stare. “Behave,” she whispers, feeling more matronly than ever. “Or you’ll have to wait outside.”

“Aye, my lady.” Jack cranks his head around to gape some more. With a look at Christian warning him that he will be responsible for enforcing this, Lucy slips off down the nearest aisle, decides that she will never get anywhere searching by hand, and draws up her magic, focusing on what she wants. _Give me a way to find Ashmole 782,_ she instructs the library, feeling it tremble like a finely plucked string. _Show me what I need to do._

At first there is no response, although her hands grow warm enough that she jerks them back, fearful of setting the reams of very flammable old paper alight. Then she grows aware of a pulsing brightness down another aisle, and follows it like a traveler lured by a will-o-the-wisp into a swamp. Hoping that it will not end unfortunately, she turns down a row of cramped dark shelves and reaches the scroll that the seeking spell has lighted on. Lucy works it out as carefully as she can, trying not to crumble the fine parchment, and carries it to a window for some better light. When she undoes the seal and unties the browned thread that binds it, however, she realizes quickly that she can’t read it. It’s written in Hebrew.

Lucy frowns, thinks hard, and then has a sudden stroke of genius (at least, so she hopes). She ties the scroll up again, returns to collect Christian and Jack, and finally manages to persuade the rector (not without a bit of magical cheating) to let her take the scroll out of the library. They emerge from the Karolinum and head up the street, then turn left into the handsome yellow-painted, gothic-roofed synagogue that sits as the university’s next-door neighbor. It in turn is next door to the vast, sprawling Jewish cemetery of Prague, which is not quite as crammed and piled with thousands of gravestones as it becomes in the modern day – indeed, it looks almost sedate, shaded with trees and encircled with a protective stone wall. Hoping that this is not a mistake, Lucy raises her hand and knocks on the synagogue door.

After several moments, it is opened by a young Jewish scholar in sidelocks, prayer shawl, tefillin, and kippah, spectacles perched on his nose, who regards her in curiosity and wariness. The Jews of Prague live in relative harmony with their Christian neighbors, at least right now, but the various outbreaks of persecution means that unexpected visitors can never be entirely welcome. In Yiddish-accented Czech, he says, “May I help you, madame?”

“Er – yes.” Lucy tries to look as unthreatening as she can. “I was wondering if the Maharal was here.”

The young scholar looks surprised, but not blankly confused, which must mean that her hunch is correct. (Lucy’s historical hunches usually are, but still.) “The Maharal? Was he expecting you?”

“He – no, but I have a question I was hoping to ask him. Something for him to look at, if he had time?” Lucy holds out the scroll. “I am recently arrived at the emperor’s court, and would much welcome the Rabbi’s help and counsel on a particular matter.”

This is stretching the truth somewhat – well, she _was_ received by Rudolf personally last night, that isn’t a lie, even if Kelley might already be working on him to revoke that privilege – but the young man, doubtless one of the Maharal’s Talmudic students, considers carefully. Then he nods. “I will see if the Rabbi is at leisure. One moment.”

With that, he disappears into the synagogue, as Christian looks at Lucy with the usual expression of awestruck delight at her genius that he wears around her. (It’s flattering, though she’s not a genius.) “Who are we here to see, Aunt Lucy? A Jewish teacher?”

“Yes,” Lucy says. “The scroll that I found is written in Hebrew, and I just remembered – well, I know that he was here right now. The Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. He’s one of the most famous Jewish mystics and philosophers, and he advises Rudolf on the Kabbalah, among other things. I was hoping he could translate.”

Christian looks even more awed, as Lucy also remembers that Rabbi Loew is the man associated with the legend of the Golem of Prague – the clay giant brought to life to defend the Jews against anti-Semitic attacks, said to sleep in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue even now, waiting to be charmed awake by a new master. As far as Lucy knows, that was just a nineteenth-century German legend, but Rabbi Loew does know all sorts of strange and magical things. Whether those will be the sort of things that can help, or if he has any reason to trust them – who knows.

After several minutes, the young scholar returns. “The Maharal says you may enter. He is in his study. Are you married, mistress?”

“Yes,” Lucy says. “Should I cover my hair?”

“Yes, and please also wash your hands in the _mikvah,_ just there.” The scholar eyes the boys. “These are kinsmen? Sons?”

“Something like that.” Lucy accepts the scarf that Christian helpfully produces, wrapping it around her head, and glances back at them. “Stay here. Hopefully I won’t be too long, but it could take a while, even if he agrees to help. Don’t get into any trouble.”

With that, she lifts her skirts and steps over the threshold, the doorposts bound with _mezuzah_ , and after a stop to rinse her hands, proceeds into the airy interior of the synagogue. It is rich with gilt and glass, some of the designs reflecting the southern Sephardic influence, and the scholar’s fellows sit together, copying out Torah scrolls, arguing vociferously over rabbinic opinions, and tidying the candles and lamps. Heads turn at Lucy’s entrance, as a well-dressed gentile noblewoman alone must not be a regular visitor, and whispering follows her up the steps to the second floor. Her escort reaches a door at the end, knocks, and calls something in Yiddish, to which another voice answers. Then he opens it and steps back. “Very well.”

“Thank you.” Lucy nods awkwardly at him and ventures into the small, steep-roofed study, which is crammed to the point of bursting with scrolls, parchments, books, and letters in countless languages. Sitting at a writing desk in the middle of it is a venerable Jewish elder, though his precise age is hard to discern. At this point, he could be almost eighty, or about sixty-five, and his silver beard and round spectacles give him the look of a wise old wizard. That is how he is seen by many subsequent generations, to be sure, and his robes are black beneath his white prayer shawl, which is fringed with gold. He has been writing something down with great care, but replaces his quill and looks up at her expectantly.

“Ah – good day, Maharal.” Lucy hopes she’s not giving inadvertent offense, and does not offer a handshake, as an observant Jewish man is not likely to initiate physical contact with an unrelated woman he has only just met. “I’m sorry for the interruption. My name is Lucy – Lady Clairmont, from England. My husband and our household have recently arrived in Prague, and I was consulting the library at the Karolinum earlier today. It – it is a long story, but I was wondering if you could help in translating a scroll that I’ve found.”

Rabbi Loew raises an eyebrow. He glances at her up and down, assessing, then gets to his feet and inclines his head in courteous greeting. “Lady Clairmont.” His voice is deep and gruff, with an undeniable air of command and clear indication that this is not a man to be trifled with. Not cruel or capricious by any means, but shrewd, powerful, and justifiably wary. He speaks English, to her surprise. “You were at the Karolinum, at the Univerzita Karlova? You must be a woman of educated sensibilities, then?”

“Yes.” Lucy wonders if she’s supposed to explain how she heard of him, or assure him of her propriety in the visit. “My – my son is downstairs. If you are busy, we can – ”

“No, no.” Rabbi Loew holds out a hand. “Show me this scroll.”

Lucy hands it over, as he undoes the thread and rolls it out in the light streaming through the windows. He regards the faded Hebrew characters with an inscrutable expression, then looks up at her again. “You said you came from England, Lady Clairmont?”

“I did, yes,” Lucy says carefully. “We arrived in Prague just over a week ago. We – ”

“No,” Rabbi Loew interrupts. “Where did you _come from?”_

“England,” Lucy repeats, confused. “My husband, Sir Garcia, has a place at Her Majesty’s court, so he has lived in London for some time, though his family is French. Near Poitiers.”

“Yes, yes. That was not what I asked.” Loew regards her levelly. “Unless you expect that I could not see that you are a witch, my lady? And furthermore, one who, if she does come from England, is an England far from here in more ways than one? Nor do you speak like any lady of Queen Elizabeth’s court that I have known, and there are many of those in Prague these days. So again, since you have sought me out, I ask where you have come from.”

Lucy hesitates. She was just reminding herself not to underestimate him, and if he is going to have the least motive to trust her, she will have to fess up about _something_. He’s not a creature, but he is claerly well versed in magic. “I came from the future,” she says, after a long pause. “Some – many years in the future.”

“A timewalker?” Rabbi Loew regards her critically. “Yes, I thought as much. Those are a rare sort, and often troublesome. How did you find this scroll?”

“I used a spell,” Lucy says. “A small spell in the Univerzita library, trying to locate something that would help me get an item I’m looking for. It’s complicated.”

“Mmm.” Rabbi Loew glances down at the scroll again. “And what made you think of me?”

“Because I knew that you were alive and working in Prague at this time.” Lucy wonders if she will be asked to sit, but she doesn’t want to move any of his stacks without his permission. “If it turns out the scroll is completely irrelevant, I apologize. I didn’t mean to waste your time. I just… that _was_ what the spell led me to, and if you could just tell me quickly what it means, I’d be obliged. After that, I can think of something else.”

Rabbi Loew smiles faintly, as if asking a rabbi to tell anyone what something means, even if it has been written down, is an hours-long argument waiting to happen. Still, however, he takes her meaning. “It is a scroll of ancient Hebrew magic,” he says. “Powerful incantations that should not be misused, from the time of the forefathers. Among them is the formula to create a great man of clay, a servant called a golem.”

Lucy can’t decide if she’s surprised or if she isn’t. It crosses her mind to wonder if she’s the reason that Rabbi Loew becomes associated with the golem legend, but that is getting ahead of themselves. “And?”

“A golem is a dangerous thing.” Rabbi Loew taps his fingers on the desk. “Impervious to all sorts of attacks and damage, but requiring a sacrifice from its creator, and not one to be undertaken lightly. It is a copy of a human, made as the Almighty forged Adam from the earth of Eden. What use would you have for such a thing, Lady Clairmont?”

Lucy supposes that making a golem and sending it to rob Kelley’s house would be one way to solve the problem, and even Kelley would be hard put to stop it. But a golem is only supposed to be used defensively, to protect the Jews from violence. Making one for her own selfish purposes could implicate the community instead and provoke Christian suspicion, never far away, that their Jewish neighbors are secretly plotting to murder them, poison wells or spread plague or perform blood libel or control the world or any of the other litany of dreary anti-Semitic conspiracies that flourish down the ages. After a long pause, she says, “Do you know Edward Kelley?”

Rabbi Loew’s mouth goes thin. “Few in Prague these days do not.”

“He has something that I need.” Lucy knows that she sounds like a jealous rival, scheming to steal as blithely from Kelley as Kelley has stolen from everyone else, and wonders how to impress that this is more than a professional dispute. “I – well, as you saw, I’ve come from the future, and there’s a lot riding on whether or not we can get hold of this.”

“Which is what?”

“A manuscript,” Lucy says. “A magical manuscript that we’ve been trying to track down for months. It was originally written by Dr. John Dee, but Kelley stole it from him, which is why we’ve travelled here. It’s a long story, but – ”

“Ah.” If Rabbi Loew understands more than she’s saying, he doesn’t let on. “Well, I have no love for the man. Kelley is a charlatan and a peacock who claims to speak with angels and unveil the mystical wisdom of lost ages, and he swindles everyone who has commerce with him. I am sometimes invited to the castle, to advise His Majesty on the Kabbalah, and Kelley is always lurking in some dark corner when I do. He does not brook rivals of any disposition or vocation, and I have never felt comfortable turning my back on him for long. So far as it goes, I can understand why you might wish to remove such an item from his clutches, but that still does not answer why you need it instead, or why I should aid in its giving.”

Lucy wonders how on earth she could condense the sordid saga of Ashmole 782, and why she and Flynn have been after it so long to so little apparent point and purpose, into a pithy tidbit. “I know it doesn’t. You don’t have any reason to trust me, Maharal, and I’m not sure what to say to convince you. But the lives of many people we love are at stake, and we’re not going to give up until we find something. You don’t have to help, and I can leave the scroll here if you want. But we – ” She looks down. “We can’t – we _won’t_ stop.”

She can feel the rabbi evaluating her with something that feels different from an ordinary gaze. Silence falls, until she can hear the muffled arguments through the floorboards. Then Rabbi Loew says, “I do not care to translate this particular scroll. Words and knowledge are dangerous things to set loose in the world unguarded, especially of this sort. But I will pay a call tomorrow, I think. Where are you and your husband lodged?”

Startled, Lucy gives him their address, and Rabbi Loew thanks her. There is a clear sense that their audience is at an end, and Lucy thanks him and is escorted out. She collects Christian and Jack, who are glancing at her questioningly, and once they are once more out in the sun, she says, “He wants to come by tomorrow. Talk to us more, I think.”

“Is he going to help?” Christian asks. “Did he know what it was?”

“Yes, but I don’t think we should discuss it out here.” Lucy notices that they have gotten several steps ahead of Jack, who has stopped and is staring down an alley, and doubles back to round him up. “Come on,” she says. “We’ll find something to eat, then – ”

“Down there, my lady.” Jack points. “He is back. The man who was in the library.”

Lucy frowns. “What man in the library? Do you mean the rector?”

“No, the other one. I knew him from somewhere, I had seen him. He was familiar.” Jack stands on his tiptoes, craning down the narrow lane. “He was in the library the whole time, my lady. He was watching you. I wondered that you did not see him.”

Despite the heat of the day, a chill goes down Lucy’s back. Jack has always been slightly creepy, but if he full-on turns into the kid from _The Sixth Sense,_ that will be a problem. She wants to ask if he’s now seeing dead people, or if they have a particular interest in her, and as she looks back at Christian, she can tell that he’s just as befuddled. “What does the man look like?” she asks instead. “Where did you know him from?”

“He was old, I think.” Jack screws up his small, sun-browned face. “He had spectacles, and white hair. He had on a neckerchief and a brown coat. He didn’t cast a shadow.”

Lucy glances quickly down the still-empty alley. “Do you see him now?”

“No. He’s gone.” Jack doesn’t look away. “But he could return.”

Christian puts a hand on his sword. “I can deal with the rascal.”

“I don’t know if you can.” Lucy ushers the boys hastily along, even as she wonders if the ongoing question of David Rittenhouse’s whereabouts might be solved. Jack used to be his thrall, after all, and despite Asher’s best efforts, some of that connection might remain, allowing the boy to perceive him even if Rittenhouse has craftily concealed himself from all other magical or mundane gazes. If he no longer resembles a horrible hellbeast, and is more or less a human, he must have either taken in enough blood or worked enough spells to regain a proper body, and that would also mean that his power is greatly increased. It was nothing to sneeze at before, but Asher’s letter warned them about attacks close behind them, that Rittenhouse could be on their trail. If he is arrived in Prague, has he been shadowing them this whole time, patiently gleaning their strategy and waiting for them to set the terms? Confident enough that he can win no matter what, or – ?

“Have you seen him before?” Lucy asks Jack urgently, kneeling down and taking his skinny shoulders in her hands. “It’s important. When did you first see him in Prague?”

“Some few days ago, my lady.” Jack looks worried. “When I was with Mistress Broxton. She spoke to him in the market. She said I was not to say anything.”

Oh, Jesus. Lucy sits back on her heels, feeling as if a giant lump of ice has congealed in her stomach. She knows exactly what day Jack is talking about – their first full day here, when she went out with Christian and Agnes, and had seen Meg leaving the inn on that mysterious errand the night before. That was when she and Flynn had their conversation about what to do, and decided to play it casual. They left Jack in Meg’s charge that day, as usual, and if they went out too – if Meg met with Rittenhouse then and warned Jack not to say anything – _Jesus._ If nothing else, this confirms that they can’t put it off, they’re going to have to confront Meg about it. “Do you know.” Lucy stops and has to start again. “Do you know if Mistress Broxton has seen that man again?”

“I don’t.” Jack shakes his head. “I don’t know. She said it was a game, a secret. I was not supposed to tell.”

“You’ve done well,” Lucy says. “It’s all right, I’m very glad that you did.” She looks up at Christian, who can’t seem to decide whether to be insulted that his young protégé has kept this even from him, or outraged at this manipulation of a boy who barely escaped Rittenhouse’s clutches the first time. “We’re going to sort this out, okay?”

Jack’s lower lip wobbles, still clearly under the impression that he will be punished, and Lucy hugs him quickly, then stands up, possessed of a cold, calm resolve. She doesn’t want to confront Meg without Flynn and Gabriel for backup, in case it really goes bad, but she’s no shrinking violet. She’s the White Goddamn Queen, as she was at pains to remind Widemann the other night, and this ends now. She remains where she is, then starts to stomp forward like a general on the march. “Come on,” she snaps. “We’re going back to the house.”

It’s not far, only ten minutes or so until they return to the new townhouse, as Lucy sweeps up the steps with an expression which is enough to send several grooms scattering. She pushes open the front door and shouts, “Meg? MEG!”

There is a confused flurry from upstairs, the stairs thump and creak, and Meg appears, her arms full of dirty linens. She blinks to see Lucy in such an evident temper, and sets them down on a chair. “My lady? Is aught amiss?”

“Who did you speak to in the market the other day?” Lucy demands, small and fierce as a wolverine. “A man, apparently. You told Jack not to say anything. An older man, with spectacles and white hair? _What did you say to him?”_

Meg stares at her, completely blank. It would be difficult for anyone to be that good an actress, and since her behavior has been completely normal, it hits Lucy suddenly that Meg herself may not remember. “My lady, are you feeling all right? It is quite warm today, perhaps I should make you a cool drink and – ?”

“You spoke to someone,” Lucy insists, even knowing that a maidservant might speak to any number of people on the daily rounds. “On our first day in Prague, you and Jack were out at the market, and you were talking to a man. Jack says you told him not to tell anyone.”

Meg continues to stare at her, confused and concerned. “I did?”

“You left the inn the night before that, late,” Lucy says, with somewhat less certainty. “I saw you sneaking out. Who are you reporting to?”

“Nobody, my lady.” Meg takes Lucy’s arm, making her flinch. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down? Master Parry said he’d hire a proper cook today, but I can manage a tonic for the nerves in the – ”

“You genuinely don’t remember any of this?” Lucy isn’t quite ready to let it go, even as Agnes appears from around the corner, drawn by the commotion. “You’ve been talking to someone – someone possibly very dangerous – and you don’t know anything about it?”

“What’s this?” Agnes asks. “What’re ye bletherin’ about, Lucy?”

“I just – ” Lucy’s righteous indignation is swiftly melting into even greater bewilderment. Perhaps this is a warning on why you shouldn’t go bursting into situations before you know the full facts, and it is not inconceivable that Rittenhouse would conveniently wipe Meg’s memory about each of their encounters. God, he really _must_ be getting powerful. “I need you to think very hard. Have you spoken to anyone, an older man with spectacles, or anyone that reminds you in any way of the beast that chased us home in London that one night? I think it might be the same entity – person – and that he’s here in Prague. And that you might have been telling him everything we’ve been doing.”

Meg’s hand flashes to her mouth. “My lady. No, I would never.”

“You may not have had a choice,” Lucy says grimly. She inspects Meg’s eyes, not sure what she’s looking for, or if there would be a particular giveaway that she was bewitched. “Agnes, is there some way we can break any enchantments that she might be under?”

“Aye, though it wouldna be pleasant for the lass.” Agnes glances at her with alert, frowning intensity. “What is it you’re on about?”

“Later.” Lucy is already starting to feel embarrassed. “Just – take her off and keep an eye on her, all right? Make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.”

Agnes considers, then shrugs, takes hold of Meg, and tows her off, even as Meg is protesting that she has chores that need doing, and more or less imprisons her in the pantry. It is thus an extremely awkward environment until Flynn and Gabriel get home, which they do early that evening. They are both scruffy, sooty, and inclined to be closed-mouthed about whatever they have been up to, though Flynn seems surprised when Lucy runs to kiss him with more than usual concern. “Are you all right?” he says, when they pull back. “Did something happen? What did you find at the Univerzita?”

“I – one thing at a time.” Since Meg seems to be their biggest problem, Lucy explains what Jack said earlier, and the fact that Rittenhouse could have a live update feed on their plans. “Should we send for your father?” she finishes up, feeling anxious and breathless. “He dealt with all this the first time, and if Rittenhouse is getting this strong – ”

Flynn and Gabriel glance at each other, communicating something unspoken, and Gabriel murmurs under his breath and excuses himself from the room, presumably to assure himself that Christian is also still in one piece. Once they’re alone, Flynn says, “I can’t deny that I want Papa with us, for any number of reasons. But if we get all of us in one place… if something did happen. The only male de Clermont left would be Wyatt, and meaning no disrespect to him – well, not much – that would destroy the family, the Knights of Lazarus, and everything else we’ve been doing for hundreds of years. We’ve known all along that our enemies are playing a clever long game. I’m just… not sure.”

Lucy looks up at him. It strikes her that Flynn is mortally afraid of putting too many precious eggs in one basket, especially when the threat to Christian’s life is already hanging over their heads. It is true that they might be expected to hastily call for Asher in this circumstance, and she remembers what he said after he fought Rittenhouse in Essex, that he seemed to know Asher particularly. It’s not out of the question that Asher had something to do with bringing Rittenhouse down in the first place, and Rittenhouse may well want spectacular revenge. It seems impossible that any common trick or trap could take down _Asher de Clermont,_ but his family must have thought that too, up until they found his body in the Nazi bunker. Besides, Rittenhouse isn’t just any plebeian enemy. He’s an immortal as powerful as any of them, if not more so, and with a wide array of abilities that are only coming into full use. If they make a mistake here, it is going to cost them dearly. It might well already have.

“What should we do?” Lucy whispers. “Garcia, what should we do?”

Flynn considers. Then he says, “Gabriel and I – we acquired a fairly comprehensive dossier of Kelley’s movements today, his house, his habits, and who he called upon. We could stand a few more days for completeness’s sake, but we could find a way to break in.”

Lucy is about to ask if it’s wise for them to follow Kelley so closely, but they _are_ vampires, they’re used to being unseen by humans, and frankly, scouting out the enemy and doing advance planning is a lot more sensible than she was expecting from them. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not going to let that rat bastard get away with doing a damn thing to my wife and son.” Flynn’s mouth turns into a grim granite line. “You can have my word on that.”

Lucy stands on her tiptoes and kisses him again, and they remain there for several moments in silence. Then she pushes herself back. “I’m going to ask Agnes if there’s any way we can contact Amelie Wallis again tonight. You and Gabriel keep an eye on Meg. Do you think we’re getting anywhere at all?”

“I don’t know.” Flynn blows out a tired breath. “I hope so. But I don’t know.”

Lucy has to agree that that is an unfortunately familiar feeling, and they go out into the main house together. After supper, Lucy and Agnes make their way up to one of the smaller rooms in the attic. According to Agnes, there is a formula in one of the books Lucy bought the other day which should help them, and they roll up their sleeves, kirtle their skirts, and get on their hands and knees, drawing an intricate pentacle with grease-chalk on the floor. They light the candles, take hands, and Agnes once more recites the summoning spell.

For whatever reason – whether the loss of Lady Beaton’s third part, the fact that the spell has to traverse a much greater distance, or anything else – it takes much longer than before. Long enough, in fact, that Lucy starts to think it didn’t work. Then at last she hears the rushing sound, can sense some door opening across time and space, and in a moment more, slowly at first and then all at once, Amelie Wallis appears in the pentacle.

She is visibly many years older than when they spoke to her last, in Essex. That time she was barely more than a teenager, whereas this time she looks to be in her forties. Her hair is streaked with grey beneath her white cap, her face is strong and weathered, and she’s heavily pregnant, a flour-stained apron tied over her belly and her dark woolen dress. She looks as if she might have been plucked out of her family’s kitchen while making supper, and muted surprise registers in her eyes as she takes in Lucy and Agnes – who, of course, look exactly the same as they did several decades ago. Then she says, “Good evening. Where is your other sister?”

“Lady Beaton? She is – she’s not here.” It’s true enough, after all. Lucy coughs. “It’s – it’s good to see you again. I wasn’t sure if it – if you’d come.”

“But I have seen you.” Amelie considers them. “You, at least. It was not long after Jebediah and I built the house. You were in the witchwoods, and I had to help you with the tree. You left again without speaking. I often thought I must have dreamed it.”

“I… yes.” That was, of course, the first time that Lucy herself met Amelie, popping back to save Flynn, Gabriel, and Jiya, the first time she ever properly timewalked. For Amelie herself, however, it would have been their second meeting. Nonlinear time: it’s a bitch. “So you are settled in – New Amsterdam? New York?”

“New York, aye. It was renamed two years ago, when the English took it.” Amelie shifts her weight, and Lucy, deciding that it is polite to give a pregnant woman the chance to sit down, passes a stool into the pentacle, which Amelie accepts. “You have bidden me here from a dangerous year. But perhaps you knew that?”

“1666,” Lucy says, realizing. It has to be, since New York was renamed in 1664. If so, it is twenty-four years since the last time they spoke, since Amelie said in Essex that she came from 1642, and 1666 was another year in which the world was theoretically supposed to end, due to the similarity with the Number of the Beast, 666. The Great Fire of London happens in September, which doubtless makes plenty of people think that there’s something to it. Amelie would have missed that, at least, but there must be enough murmurings to reach her even in rural seventeenth-century colonial New York. “Is something going on in particular? With the creature world, or – because of what happened to your father?”

This is as delicate as she can be in probing for what Amelie knows now about Henry de Prestyn and his fate, and her many-times-great-grandmother’s eyebrows raise speculatively. There’s a long pause. Then Amelie says, “Indeed, what about my father?”

Lucy winces. “What do you know about that?”

“I asked first.” Amelie’s voice remains level, but she clearly does not intend to be jerked around. “Did I not?”

“You did.” Lucy thinks fast. She doesn’t want to throw Gabriel under the bus, especially since he’s not here to defend himself, but they still haven’t gotten him to explain this even to them. It’s deeply frustrating that they have to call upon someone from seventy-six years in the future, rather than the person who’s already here and who knows, but won’t say. “Someone killed him when he traveled to November 1589. His body was sold to Dr. John Dee by Father Andrew Hubbard, the vampire primate of London, and his skin was used to make the parchment for the book we’re looking for, the one we mentioned last time. Ashmole 782. I asked if you knew anything about it, and you said you didn’t have anything to do with alchemy. But this time I thought… you might.”

Amelie looks revolted, but – thankfully – not as if this is the first time she has heard the story. “I know the book,” she concedes. “Indeed, it was the fact of your mentioning it those many years ago that drove me to search it out, and answers for what had happened to my father. I do not remember much about his death. He came home in a greatly agitated state one day, when I was eight years old. He said that he had learned something terrible and he was going to see if he could do something about it. He gave me a kiss and told me to be good for my mother, and then he left. That was the last time I ever saw him.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy says, her throat thick. “I – I lost my father when I was eight, too. Both my parents, actually. His – his name was also Henry. Henry Wallace.”

Amelie looks surprised, and not unsympathetic. “I am sorry. What happened?”

“Someone murdered him too.” The similarity of it has managed to evade Lucy until now, why she feels so strongly about uncovering the truth of her great-odd grandfather Henry’s death, if she can somehow get that ever-elusive closure for her own. “I think I know who, or I wonder, but – do you know anything about why your father went? If he learned something terrible, where did he learn it from? Have you ever found out?”

“I cannot be sure.” Amelie taps her fingers together, dark brows drawn. “Nor, of course, can I take responsibility for what might happen if I should tell you. But I have grown increasingly certain that it was from a vampire. Michel of Antioch.”

“Michel of – ?” Lucy bites her tongue hard enough that she tastes blood. Michel of Antioch is better known as Michael Temple, since it was his original name, and it goes without saying that anything he told Henry de Prestyn, anything he made him do, was very definitely evil. She can’t be sure if this would be the original-timeline Temple, who’s been plotting revenge on the de Clermont family since 1307, or a future-timeline Temple, traveling back with Rittenhouse’s help to interfere at the crucial moment of Ashmole 782’s creation. After all, if Henry doesn’t die, the book isn’t made. Does Temple want it, or not want it, or – or _what?_ This makes far too much depressing sense for Amelie to be lying, and she’s been honest with them thus far, so Lucy doesn’t think she’s wrong. It’s just, well. Completely terrifying.

“Michel of Antioch, yes,” Amelie repeats. “If that name means something to you, take care. Whatever I had learned of him, I… did not much like.”

It strikes Lucy that Amelie did not emigrate to the New World, and then settle in the most remote part of a territory that was until recently claimed by the Dutch, because she wanted to be anywhere near England or anything they controlled. They thought it was just because of her encounter with the infamous Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General, but Hopkins died in 1647, three years before Amelie and her husband Jebediah even built the house that stands on the future site of Denise and Michelle’s place in Madison County. If Amelie was just running from _him,_ she could have come back to England whenever she wanted. But if there was someone else she was afraid of, especially after she learned that her father was made into a book… someone obviously still very much alive and good at pulling strings… someone who has been as dangerous and as perennial an enemy as Temple…

All at once, Lucy thinks they might have taken a foolish risk in calling up Amelie, when there’s still the possibility that their actions and their information might be compromised. She left the boys downstairs to keep an eye on Meg, but what if that doesn’t matter? It seems rude to just yank Amelie out of her life every few decades, get her to divulge some crucial secret information, and then yeet her back into oblivion, but as contorted and confusing as the timelines are, the very fact that Amelie is here is proof that the consequences will affect all of them. If Lucy isn’t careful, she will meddle herself right out of existence. “You must be tired,” she says, nodding at Amelie’s stomach. “We should send you back. Is it the – ?”

“The sixth,” Amelie says, getting to her feet with a grimace. “If nothing else, I am accustomed to it now. It will be a boy, I think. Do you suppose I should name him Henry?”

Lucy remembers that her father was descended from Amelie and Jebediah Wallis via their sixth child and youngest, also named Henry. In other words, if something happens to Amelie before this child is born, Lucy is very possibly temporal toast. She suddenly feels an urge to check the corners and the closets for lurking malefactors, wonders if Temple or Rittenhouse has their nose pressed to the window outside. “Yes, that sounds good,” Lucy says, aware that if Temple from one timeline or another has made it to 1666 New York, sending Amelie back is in fact no guarantee of safety. Perhaps they should even keep her here, but that would snarl things even worse. “Thank you, you’ve given us a lot to think about. We’re sorry for the interruption. I’m not sure if we’ll speak again, but – ”

“Oh,” Amelie says cryptically, eyeing them up and down. “I should think we will.”

With that, and the sense of a door blown shut in a sudden wind, she’s gone, as Lucy and Agnes glance at each other with troubled expressions. It’s Agnes who finally says, rather unnecessarily all things considered, “Something evil’s well afoot, lass.”

“I know.” Lucy sits down heavily, rubbing the bridge of her nose. She can see the jaws of the trap closing in on them from all sides: Rittenhouse here, Temple God knows where or possibly several places at once, her own existence suddenly thrown into peril, Kelley having threatened Christian’s life, Gabriel beginning to suspect the worst of them, the true and morbid scale of absolutely everything that they stand to lose. “If Michel of Antioch gets to her somehow, before she gives birth – and I don’t put it past him – then my own father might end up never being born. And for that matter, me.”

Agnes looks slightly squiggle-eyed, but does not ask for clarification on how this works. They clean up the chalk and candles and the rest of it, and Lucy goes down to find Flynn and warn him that Temple, far from remaining content to sit on his hands in the twenty-first century until they get back, is now actively and malevolently interfering in their timeline. If nothing else, whatever he said alarmed Henry de Prestyn into timewalking to 1589 trying to stop something, and if so, it makes Temple the prime mover behind all of these events, whether or not he was in the first place. That might partly explain why Gabriel killed Henry, but still not entirely. Lucy knows, however, that if they push Gabriel for details on that, he will push them for details on Christian, tit for tat. And if it’s what they need to do, so be it. They will have to accept the sacrifice. But God, at what _cost?_

Yet again, Lucy doesn’t sleep very well, and what with everything, she has forgotten to mention that Rabbi Loew will be calling the next day. The servants thus appear shortly after breakfast, with an air of bewilderment, to announce that there is a strange Jewish gentleman on the front stoop who seems to expect to be let in, and Lucy hastily orders them to do so and make up a new cup of tea. Used to odd requests, they hop to it, and Rabbi Loew steps into the sunlit dining room with his air of quiet gravitas. “Good morning, Lady Clairmont. I hope this is not too unsociable an hour. I have been awake with the halakhic scrolls half the night.”

“No, you’re quite all right.” Lucy glances at Flynn, who is looking equally confused. “This is my husband, Garcia. Garcia, this is Rabbi Judah Loew.”

She says the name hoping it will mean something to him – she’d be surprised if it didn’t – and Flynn’s eyes spark with sudden and shrewd understanding. They make a place for Rabbi Loew at the table, and he sits between them, graciously accepting the tea. “I have considered what you said to me yesterday,” he says, speaking directly to Lucy, rather than explaining his presence to her husband or seeking Flynn’s approval, as might be expected. “I will help you, if only since Edward Kelley has a baneful influence on the city and the emperor already, and I have no wish to see it grow any stronger. You said it was a manuscript that you wished to retrieve from his house, yes?”

“Yes.” Lucy fights a feeling of both relief and foreboding. “Would that be with the help of the scroll that I brought to you yesterday?”

“I think so.” Rabbi Loew considers, stirring his tea. “It is an old spell, and little used. But if you wished to make a servant of clay, it would serve well enough.”

“A golem?” Flynn blinks. “Is that what you – ?”

“It is called a golem, yes, as I told your wife yesterday.” Loew glances at Flynn narrowly. “However, even a small golem would take time and effort to construct, and the ways to speed up that process are blood magic, black magic. You are goyim, so it is not my role to instruct or command upon your moral state or the precepts of your consciousness, but if nothing else, I do not advise entering into it lightly.”

Lucy can imagine that he doesn’t, but she is reaching the point where she’s just about done with empty platitudes, virtuous displays of Good ™, or dutifully playing by the rules, just to watch their enemies slip in the back door, cheat, and win. “What exactly does it involve?”

Rabbi Loew weighs his words. At last he says, “I would sculpt the golem’s body from the clay of the banks of the Vltava, according to a secret recipe and at a certain phase of the moon. A magical scroll, a _shem,_ would be inscribed with the golem’s instructions – in this case, to steal the manuscript from Kelley, and let none hinder it in the doing – and placed in its mouth. An eye, also enchanted, would be placed in its head, and through this, you, its mistress, would observe its movement and control its actions. It would be your blood that the _shem_ was written in, and the invocations are to a different sort of power.”

“The Devil?” Lucy is not going to sell her soul to Satan for one corn chip, so to speak, and Marlowe is literally writing _Dr. Faustus_ right now, for all the cautionary tale imaginable about getting too deep in the pursuit of arcane and powerful knowledge. “Is that what you mean?”

“Something of that sort.” Rabbi Loew shrugs. “Fallen angels, darker beings, demonic entities, dukes and princes of hell, of the creatures outlined in the _Key of Solomon_ and other such grimoires. Of course, the _Key_ claims that the magician must clothe himself in the power of Yahweh and invoke His protection first, but that is a flimsy pretext. Be not deceived, you would be taking a great risk. It is the sort of magic far better studied than ever uttered aloud.”

Lucy and Flynn exchange a look. They know better than to scoff off or underestimate what Loew is saying, and if they cut corners in the pursuit of a quick advantage, they could end up paying a much higher price later, in any number of ways. Lucy says, “How long would it take to create a golem without the black magic?”

“I could not be sure,” Loew says. “Rabbi Eliyahu of Chelm is said to have done it as well, I would have to consult his scrolls. But it would not be sooner than several months.”

“We don’t have several months,” Flynn says brusquely. “Do you have something else to suggest? Besides a golem?”

Lucy gives him a sharp look, since Loew doesn’t have to help them at all and is sticking his neck out to do so, and Flynn gives the older man a brief, apologetic nod. For his part, the rabbi does not seem ruffled. “Yes, of course,” he says. “You could endeavor to steal the book yourself, in your own person. My help would be less direct in that case, though still possible, perhaps. I understand that you are a man of… certain abilities?”

Flynn glances at him, as if trying to guess what the Jewish theological position on supernaturals might be. Clearly more accommodating than rigidly intolerant Christian dogma, at least, and Loew doesn’t seem ultimately opposed to performing the magic if necessary – just that he won’t have it said that he didn’t warn them about the effects. If nothing else, Jewish law and practice focuses on challenging everything, on arguing all positions, on calling into question the existence of God himself, rather than the Christian insistence that there is only one way to believe and act and everything else is unconscionable heresy. Loew is a pragmatist, and he is reluctant to use his power, but not unwilling. He would only be the messenger, after all. The responsibility for its making, and quite possibly its violent unmaking, would fall on Lucy and Flynn.

“I do have certain… skills, yes,” Flynn acknowledges. “Beyond that of ordinary men. But if it went wrong – or if Kelley was hoping that I personally came to rob his house, myself and my brother Gabriel, or my nephew Christian – it could be a trap waiting to spring.”

“In that case, yes,” Loew says. “It would be more sensible to send the golem as proxy in your place. The _shem_ would give it considerable power. It could turn invisible, and it would be resistant to all attacks, magical or mortal. Even Kelley would find it very hard to resist.”

Lucy and Flynn look at each other again. Lucy really, _really_ doesn’t want to send Flynn, Gabriel, or Christian to do the robbery in person, as she can’t escape the conviction that that is indeed exactly what Kelley wants. They obviously don’t have several months for Rabbi Loew to make the golem the nice way. She can do this, or –

Just then, they are interrupted rather spectacularly by Gabriel bursting through the door – which is what he usually does, but this is different. Even upon seeing that they have a visitor, he barely stops to acknowledge him. “You two,” he barks at Lucy and Flynn. “Come right now. Something’s happened to the maid.”

Evidently he has been continuing to ensure that Meg stays away from important meetings, which is good, but at that, all of them, including Rabbi Loew, jump out of their chairs. They hustle down the corridor after Gabriel and into the sitting room at the back of the house, where a terrible scene awaits. Meg is on the floor looking like something out of _The Exorcist:_ eyes rolling madly, foaming at the mouth, kicking and thrashing, as Christian tries to hold her down. It’s taxing even his vampiric strength, and he looks up, panting and distraught, as his aunt and uncle hurtle in. “I don’t know what happened! We were watching her, she – she took over sick like this, we can’t – ”

Lucy hesitates only a split second, then throws herself to her knees next to Meg, grabbing her hand. She summons up her magic, but when she tries to use it, she can feel the presence of something huge and black and a hundred times stronger than her, which flicks her efforts aside as negligently as swatting a fly. She tries again, but Meg screams, a horrible, choked sound as if she can’t get it around whatever – _whoever –_ has her in its monstrous grip. Then her head cranks to the side as eerily as a clockwork doll, her maddened eyes fix straight on Lucy, and her dribbling mouth splits open. “Ah, witch,” she says, in a man’s voice, a half-familiar rasp. “You may congratulate me for ridding you of the girl.”

“Wh – ” Lucy grabs at Meg again, but it isn’t Meg, not really. She knows exactly who is just speaking through her stolen mouth, and who has been using her as a spy all along. “Rittenhouse!” she yells. “David Rittenhouse, _get out!_ Or I’ll – I’ll _tear you –_ ”

“I look forward to it, my dear.” The voice oozes with horrible sycophantism. “But if you will excuse me, I have a book to fetch first. Your intelligence has been invaluable. Farewell.”

With that, Meg jerks as if a string has been cut, then slumps, limp as a rag, as Rittenhouse violently and permanently switches off the lights on his way out of her head. He won’t risk her remembering anything to tell them, even if he wiped her memory, and he isn’t going to pass up the opportunity to salt the wound. They already thwarted him from using Jack as a thrall, so he has extra incentive to demonstrate that he got to Meg anyway when they weren’t looking. His words don’t leave a lot of room for doubt. _I have a book to fetch first._ Rittenhouse knows where Ashmole 782 is, and he is going to steal it. Possibly this very night, before they can do anything about it. And if he does –

Lucy tries to focus, tries to think, but her head is echoing with a dull, constant screaming. She grips Meg’s shoulders, shaking her, but it’s useless. Meg’s head twists unnaturally to one side, her neck broken, her eyes open and empty. There’s nothing left. She’s not waking up. She’s not there. She’s gone.

“Aunt Lucy,” Christian says, sounding deeply distressed. His words percolate as if through a thick layer of mud. “Aunt Lucy, you have – you have to let her go. There’s nothing you can do for her. Aunt Lucy, she’s dead, and you can’t – please, you have to – ”

It’s only then that Lucy realizes her hands are snarling and sparkling with uncontrolled magic, that Meg’s body is glowing an eerie red, and if she doesn’t get herself together, she could very well set the entire house and all of them on fire. It takes both Flynn and Gabriel to grab her arms and pull her off, and her legs feel like overcooked noodles, unwilling to support her. She’s still making some incoherent noise of rage and denial and grief, knowing that this wasn’t Meg’s fault, that she meant what she said, that she never _wanted_ to betray them, but Rittenhouse arrantly possessed, spied through, and murdered her anyway. And if he gets Ashmole 782, if he – if all of this –

Lucy is aware that she is shaking, but in a dreamy, distant, far-off sort of way. Her own tongue feels turned to clay, or to lead. Flynn and Gabriel are still holding her up, they’re saying something comforting, but she doesn’t hear them. Her firedragon familiar burns at her chest, begging to break free and devour her enemies, sweep the land clean, and Lucy isn’t sure why she should hold it back. She wants to cry, and then she wants to rage. She _can’t._

Silence holds the room in its grip for five seconds, ten, more. Maybe a minute, Lucy doesn’t know. Then she sucks down a deep breath, makes a decision, and pulls away from Flynn and Gabriel. Turns to Rabbi Loew, her voice perfectly calm.

“Come on, Maharal,” she says. “We need to make a golem.”


	15. Hinterlands

Maria de Clermont has never been known for her patience.

That might surprise those who have looked upon her only from afar, or see her standing at the center of her world as if she is, in fact, still holding it up. You might consider that she has the fortitude to endure anything, and you are not altogether wrong. Bitter necessity has taught her how. But patience _,_ no. Maria is not certain she has ever truly known the way of that, or wanted to. She never saw the point of _waiting_ for things, not when there was something more profitably to be _done_ about them. She is aware of the strategic value of it, but that is just it. Her patience only comes in the context of war. To wait – endlessly, nobly, for no reason, for no purpose, for nothing at the end, merely for some hollow moral point or knowledge of tried and tested character – Maria sees absolutely no value in that at all. Her character has been tested and tested and tested again. There is nothing left to be done for it. There is, it feels sometimes on her worst days, when Cecilia tells the villagers of Sept-Tours that Madame has a headache and cannot receive them, nothing left at all.

Doubtless, Maria thinks, they know that she cannot actually have headaches, though that scarcely matters. It is a polite and general euphemism for all else that is wrong with her, that can never be mended, even as she continues to turn a flawless, perfect, lovely face to the outside world. Her pride would never permit anything less, though there _were_ many years where that was a bloody and savage lie. She has lost track of how many precisely – years, deaths, griefs. All of it blurs together in one unending litany. Vampires do not dream, and so do not have nightmares. Perhaps that might be accounted a small mercy, but it makes no difference. Maria lives it waking nonetheless.

No one ever told her how to do this – even her, good Greek girl that she was. No muse ever sang the song of widowed Persephone, her great lord of the underworld slain, still expected to carry on and to rule the land of the dead alone. The vampire who turned Maria thousands of years ago in the shadow of the acropolis was called Kore, one of the queen’s other names, and though Maria but little remembers her mother now, she wonders sometimes if it _was_ her, wandered up from some chthonic crack in a flowering meadow to share the immortal life of the gods, both blessing and curse. The making of vampires came from the Egyptians and their Book of the Dead, the necromancers and magicians and acolytes of Horus and Osiris and Isis, constantly searching for a way to bridge the worlds of life and death. They meant this gift only for the pharaohs, jealously guarded. But as the medieval chroniclers well knew and unquestioningly accepted, even the dead can sometimes wander from their graves.

( _Is_ she not dead? Folk wisdom would say she was, has been dead all these millennia, the endless sand in the hourglass. But it is only recently that Maria has begun indeed to feel so. She knows the truth, that this is only a pale copy of life, and the silence of her unbeating heart echoes where the sound should be.)

At times Maria manages it more than others. She killed witches and Nazis and anybody else she could think of to blame, until her fangs and fingers ran scarlet with blood. It did not fix her, it could never do that, but it helped. Yet she knows herself better than to allow it again, unbridled. She has no patience and even less does she have mercy. If presented with a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand innocent souls who had to be killed, if the bargain was at the end of it her husband should be returned to her, alive and well, Maria would do it. She would not want to, she would struggle with it, she would not take any joy in it, but she would do it nonetheless. They have often called her the most dangerous of the de Clermonts, and for good reason. Her sons are soldiers, but they are not like this. Not like her.

Maria never thought much about being a mother, not before. She was married at the age of fifteen to an older man from Sparta who preferred beardless boys, never entirely acclimated to the expectation (or indeed the mechanics) of lying with a woman, and if she conceived at all, she never knew it, lost early enough in her term to be only a heavier and more painful monthly flow than usual. She was a beautiful girl, she wore flowers in her hair and a gauzy white chiton, and when her husband became inclined to drink and strike her and curse her for drawing other men’s gazes, she dosed his wine with black nightshade and honey to cover the taste, and stood in a veil at the funeral so the mourners could not see her smile. It strikes her sometimes as impossibly ironic that then she was so happy to be a widow, saw it as light and liberation, contrived to enter such a state by her own free will. She became a priestess at the temple of Artemis, and that was where she eventually met that beautiful older woman, ageless and deathless, the woman called Kore. Who whispered of a gift that Maria deserved, unlike these other small and flawed and foolish mortals, and so, perforce, she gave it.

Maria did not mind. She found freedom in it, and the abject terror of men who did things to women that they should not, and the first few centuries sped past like the falling of ripened grain beneath the scythe. How little she thought of Asherios Athos, when she first met him. He was the only other man of her kind that she had ever known; until then, she believed that vampires were exclusively female, as they were in fact often imagined to be. Asherios was no endorsement for the contrary. He was the exact sort of boor that she had disposed of so many times before: arrogant, swaggering, fond of swords and chariots, war and women, wine and revelry, spending all night in debauchery and staggering out of Dionysus’s bacchanal to ruthlessly waste the Thracians or the Persians or the Romans or the Macedonians or whoever it was this year. She never missed an opportunity to dress him down for it, nor he to return in kind. They skirmished with barely blunted verbal blades for months, until the day the temple was attacked and Asherios cut through two hundred men to get to her and save her from the usual fate of captured vestal virgins. He was handsome, very handsome, she had always known that. But it was not his beautiful face or his quick wit or any other of his dubious personal qualities that made her look at him in a new light. It was – so like her own – that willingness to lay all the world to ruin, so long as the beloved, the object of _eros,_ was safe.

From that day forward, things changed between them. The barbed banter had always concealed considerable attraction, of course, and Asherios changed as well, proved to be the patient, thorough, deliberate one between the pair of them. He grew seasoned, and wiser, and gentler, and laid aside all that she had misliked about him before. She could not even recall the precise day when she looked upon him and knew that it was it, it was him, she wanted to spend all the years to come with him, and to be – once again, even given her dubious experience before – a wife, _his_ wife. But as well his partner, his equal, his queen and lady in all ways, and so to eat the pomegranate seeds in a different way and take up a new crown. This one was not fashioned of flowers, but of steel, and she thought it suited much the better. There was the wedding in secret, and the demanding delirium of mating, of union and consummation for weeks and weeks, in a place far from the world and everything else but each other. Artemis’s priestesses were sworn to chastity, and by taking him as her husband, her lover, her other half, Maria had to leave the temple for good. But it did not matter. Not then. Not when all of eternity waited for them, and the open road ahead.

It was not terribly long after that when they met Gabrielus Gaius Aurelianus, the Roman aristocrat who, after the death of his little-loved wife and their infant sons and the loss of his place in the Senate, had become dissatisfied and alienated from that world and all that it scarcely amounted to. Maria and Asher were hundreds of years older than him, and it was easy to take on a parental role, even to a grown man who could be thought to need it less. They had begun to think, like other married couples, of having a family together, and this was how it was done. They asked him if he wanted it, and he said that yes, yes, he did.

And so, Gabriel became their first son, the one they turned together, the one they took such painstaking care in making, for neither of them could risk doing something wrong. Vampire sirings were rarely pleasant affairs, could be brutal and messy and bloody, but then, so was birth in the usual human fashion, and Maria and Asher had chosen this child for themselves, knew already what he would be and who he was. When Gabriel awoke in the fledgling blood hunger, Maria nursed him as she would have any babe they laid in her human arms, and soothed him, and loved him more than she had loved anyone in the world save for Asher. This was, of course, a different sort of love, _storge_. She felt it well through her and suffuse her and make her something new again, change upon change. She was a _mother_ now, and in that, found something that even her hard, ruthless heart was always meant to be.

For a few centuries after that, they were completely content as a family of three, after they had moved to Gaul and built a villa, taken a new name together from the nearby city, a name to mean _them._ But the three de Clermonts, beautiful and dangerous and oddly ageless, attracted notice and suspicion from their neighbors, and most people began to keep a judicious distance. Perhaps that was why Maria was so surprised when a little girl ran up to her one morning and offered her a posy of flowers, said that she was very pretty and she wanted to be just like her. Her father came hurrying up behind, a tall man with dark hair, who spoke French with a noted Ragusan accent and apologized repeatedly for the trouble. Told the girl – Iris, her name was – not to bother Madame again, and picked her up, hurrying her away, as the child waved cheerily at Maria over his shoulder. Iris had never been afraid of them. Even now, when she looks at their ancient, weathered graves in the village church, Maria can see the brightness of her smile, if not the precise shape. God rest that innocent.

Perhaps that was part of it, when she found Iris’s father broken on the stones beneath the bell tower, where he had fallen or leapt in a fit of grief after the attack by bandits on the road from Clermont, the way the girl had pleaded so prettily to go to the fair, and how it left her and her mother with the sweet smile cold beneath their shroud. Maria and Asher had not discussed the possibility beforehand, not the way they had with Gabriel, because Garcia had a human life and family and there was, of course, no conscious notion that he should join theirs instead. They had left open the idea of siring more children, but none of that had been attended to when Maria had to make a choice. She asked Garcia if he wanted it, she had to, but he was delirious with pain and rage and grief, and she can never be sure that he understood her or what he said in return. When she made him, and changed everything.

Garcia’s infancy as a vampire was nothing like Gabriel’s. He had died in violence and he rose in violence, and while Asher never questioned Maria’s decision or his place as Garcia’s father, it was the hell of a thing to ask your husband and son to merely accept. She is still unsure why they did, why they remained so resilient about facing Garcia’s worst rages, even as he struck out as a rogue and a loner and relentlessly murdered everyone responsible for his family’s death. But Maria understood him then, and she has understood him ever since. _God,_ how she adored him, her sweet, angry, broken, raging second son, and his determination to scour the earth with fire. She nursed him too, she held him when he wept, and unlike Asher and Gabriel, she never tried to get him to cease his rampage. She knew that she herself would do the same, and it is to her endless grief that it was confirmed beyond all disputing.

Yet of course, nobody wanted that forever, and Garcia’s darkness had strained the family nearly to its limits, when Maria acquired, much to her surprise, a grandson. It was early in the ninth century, Christian of Neustria was a young Carolingian soldier mortally wounded in a skirmish, and Gabriel sired him on Garcia’s request, as he wanted to save the boy but could not yet face up to the thought of being a father again. Christian changed everything for them, and for Gabriel and Garcia particularly. That was when they fell into their bond of inviolable brotherhood and devoted companionship – or at least, Maria thought then that it was inviolable – and once more, such a fragile and ephemeral thing, the de Clermonts were happy. It seems such a dim and distant memory, a shadow in a glass.

It was 1179 when their last son joined them, again on Maria’s own initiative, when she saved William de Logan from the Plantagenet civil wars, one of the Young King’s Scottish men-at-arms. To her dismay, this new addition was not welcomed as warmly as the others. Gabriel and Garcia had grown into a singular entity unwilling to make any space for William, were diehard supporters of the Young King’s brother and bitter rival Richard, and it was Christian who welcomed his new uncle to the family, befriended him and lived more as his brother than did the other two. Maria loved William too, of course she did, for she chose all of her children and perhaps each of them, broken and adrift in their own ways, called to her as a wound in need of mending. She is not sure why she, a priestess and a fierce defender of women, never sired any daughters, other than that perhaps the boys seemed to need it more. Or perhaps she wanted to spare any daughter the burden of having her as a mother. It would be difficult between them, and she had to remain able to protect all the girls, not just one.

After that, the years ran on. 1307, Gabriel and Garcia’s almighty battle against Gerbert of Aurillac, and Cecilia of Normandy coming to live with them. Then 1762, the year that would be the worst of Maria’s entire existence were it not for 1944. Garcia and his lover Matej Radić, the attack by the vampire hunters on Sept-Tours, the death of her grandson Christian, and the brutal, comprehensive immolation of everything that Gabriel and Garcia had ever shared, the end of their family as they had known it, and nothing that Maria and Asher could do, as greatly as they tried, to put it back together again. The unexpected addition of a granddaughter in 1888 – Flynn’s Jiya – and then the fatal twentieth century, and its wars to end all wars. When Asher said that this time, all of them would have to fight.

Maria cannot think of the 1940s at all. Or the 1950s. Or much of the 1960s. She can barely touch the memory, though it haunts her at odd hours, of when they found him in the Nazi bunker. Sept-Tours is a shadow of everything it was then. She has not moved any of Asher’s things in their bedroom, though sometimes seeing them stabs her more, and she must thrust them into a trunk or wardrobe. She still has all the letters he wrote her; whenever they were apart, they rarely went a day without. He would leave her love notes in the margins of books, send her volumes of poetry, sometimes ride home in the middle of a campaign just to spend a night with her. He was the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus, a powerful French vassal, and the senior figure not only of their family but of much of Europe’s vampires, and yet he never did anything without her advice and counsel. She never meant to live a day without him. She does not know how she has done it now. If it was meant to heal, it never has. All the bodies she heaped up in her mad frenzy of revenge never brought him back. She does not care, nor does she repent. She only wishes she had managed to kill a few more.

And now, this. Gabriel in an enchanted sleep on the behest of the Goddess – Maria finds it brutally ironic that she, a former priestess of Artemis, owes her son’s life to her under the name of Diana, wonders if all that service and devotion counted a damn – Garcia and Lucy gone to the past, and the terrible threat to the rest of their family. Maria knows that she did not handle things the most graciously, when she left the Christophers’ house in New York, over their refusal to tell her which witch attacked Gabriel. She did not bid farewell to Garcia before he went to the sixteenth century, and it has not escaped her attention that they have gone to a year where Asher (and Christian) are both alive. She has desperately tried not to think of the fact that Garcia could be with his father right now, seeing his face, touching his hand, listening to him speak. Perhaps that is why she could not be there when they timewalked, Maria thinks. She would have clutched, she would have humiliated herself, she would abjectly beg to be taken along, and she almost hates her past self, living in comfortable oblivion in 1590 and so unaware of how lucky she is to have Asher. She was an elegant Renaissance matron then. How little it all seems to matter.

And yet. Even now the depredations, the insults and Michel of Antioch’s single-minded determination to destroy their family, have not stopped. If anything, they have grown more vicious. That is why Maria is here, after Cecilia was kidnapped from the estate in Scotland, why she is with her granddaughter and her granddaughter’s human boyfriend and the groggy Anton Sokolov, and William has just walked in with a strange vampire calling himself Jack Blackfriars who claims to have known Christian, and more than that. _I do not suppose you would remember me, Madame de Clermont._ This –

_This –_

This Maria has the least patience for, after all the imposters and tricks and assaults, the damage and the darkness, and the fact that she has kept Asher’s secrets and never meant to speak them to a living soul. And yet, Jack has those portrait miniatures of Garcia and Lucy, and the world holds on a singular, breathless point, daring her to call him a liar, to attack him, order him to depart while his head is still on his shoulders, or anything else. She might do any one, or all; she has not decided. He admittedly has a faintly familiar smell, but it is not of de Clermont make. Nor did Christian, of course, have any sire that the family knew about, and it would be entirely unlike him not to claim his get, to abandon them and not bring them to the bosom of Sept-Tours and the family. If Jack thinks to fool them, he will learn for himself the full scope of Maria’s wrath. She should unleash it now. And yet.

“Sorry,” Jiya says, the first thing any of them have managed since Jack’s appearance. _“What_ is going on here? You said you knew my father and stepmother? Do you mean Lucy?”

“I did.” Jack has a handsome, haughty elegance that does befit his claim to vicarious membership of their family, but Maria does not take her hawk-eyed stare off him as he ventures to sit down. At her harsh throat clearing, he takes the hint and stands directly up again. “And as you say, I first saw you in Oxford, as I traveled there when word came to light that Ashmole 782 had been found. If I alarmed you, I apologize.”

“There were all kinds of creatures in Oxford hanging around Ashmole 782.” Jiya surveys him warily, and Maria is pleased to see that her granddaughter trusts this newcomer no more than she does herself. “Most of them up to no good. Why on earth should we believe you?”

Jack nods at the portrait miniatures, as Garcia and Lucy’s painted faces gaze sedately out of the gilted oval frames. “That _is_ your father and his wife?”

“Yes,” Jiya says. “But that doesn’t explain how you knew them, or what you want.”

“William,” Maria breaks in severely. “I ask again. Why _did_ you bring this opportunistic interloper to our house, when we have already lost Cecilia?”

“Because he…” Wyatt looks uncomfortable, but determined. “He knows things about Temple. And what happened in London, when Flynn and Lucy were there in 1590, and Ashmole 782. He says that they took him in when he was a young boy, an orphan on the street, and that – that Christian looked after him particularly.”

Maria flinches at her late grandson’s name, and she can tell that Wyatt himself is not unaffected. She wheels on Jack like a deck gun. “Are you planning to claim that you are in fact of my direct bloodline? You do not smell it. And if you lie to me – ”

Jack raises both hands, as if in awareness that he is facing one of the most dangerous vampires to ever live, and it will behoove him to keep a courteous tongue in his head and answer her questions promptly. “Christian did not sire me, no,” he says. “I was made some years later, by one Father Andrew Hubbard.”

Jiya looks blank, but Wyatt frowns. “Father Hubbard – wait. Wasn’t he that major dick in Tudor London, the one Gabriel and Garcia butted heads with all the time? The evil vampire overlord of the city? I seem to recall he was a nasty piece of work.”

“He was,” Maria says austerely. If Jack thinks he’s going in the right direction for any of them to trust him, he is sorely mistaken. “So you are a blood child of one of our most notorious enemies, you supposedly know convenient _things_ about Michael Temple that you decline to elaborate, and then – if you remember us, why do none of us remember you? If we ourselves had met you at any point, how is it we came so completely to forget? _Answer me!”_

Despite himself, Jack takes a step back. “Something happened. You – you had to. I do not know the details, or the discussions. It was a long time ago, and I was very young. There was a spell, or a crisis… what happened at Sept-Tours….”

 _“What_ happened at Sept-Tours?” Maria rears back like a cobra. “My son and the witch were not planning to go there, so far as I recall.”

“After Prague, after the…” Jack seems to be deciding how much he can tell them. Maria considers biting him, and she may do so, if it comes to that. He could not hide his secrets and his evasions from the truth she could bitterly strip from his blood. Yet her granddaughter is still watching, has never seen her at her worst, and Maria thinks it best to keep a veneer of politeness, however pointed and poisoned, atop the proceedings for now. “Look. Here.”

With that, he undoes the catches on the portrait frames, removes the canvas backings, and pulls out two folded pieces of almost-translucent paper. He hands them to Maria, who feels her breath catch in her throat. It is her beloved’s handwriting; she would know it anywhere, the fine loops and slants, the sharp-edged crosses, the elegant tail on the descenders. It swims dizzily in front of her eyes as she stares at it, struggling to take in what this must mean. If this is proof positive that Garcia and Lucy made it, that they met _Asher,_ that he –

“Grand-mère?” Jiya sounds nervous. “Grand-mère, what does it say?”

“It says – ” Maria has to clear her throat, and even then, she is not sure that her voice will be entirely steady. “It says, _To those who receive this message, I charge you to do all good faith and homage to the bearer, and to the cause of my son, Lord Garcia de Clermont, and his wife, Lady Lucy de Clermont, even as you would unto myself, and by the seal of the Knights of Lazarus, hereto inscribed. Set in my own hand, at Sept-Tours in the kingdom of France, in the year of grace 1590, Asher de Clermont.”_

There is a brief and thunderstruck silence as Maria finishes this recitation. She continues to stare at the paper, the artful scrawl of the signature, the Knights’ seal inked in the corner, and wants to clutch it, to hold it and not let go. This is the first letter she has had, even indirectly, since the blood-smeared note they found on Asher’s body after they brought it home to Sept-Tours, explaining what had happened and that he had to choose death rather than turning Hitler. It is proof, at once wonderful and heart-shattering, that Garcia and Lucy did make it, that they were there, that they _saw_ him, that Asher’s living hand moved across this page – and then what? It is entirely like him to be so far-sighted as to conclude that they might need a way to send messages across time, even and especially if he should be unable to do so, but how did Jack come by these? Surely Asher would not have entrusted them personally to a small human child? Even he could not imagine that becoming a necessity. So what –

“Did you steal these?” Maria demands. “How did you find them?”

“I was given them,” Jack says. “Later, when I was grown and after I had been turned. The man who brought them only said he was called Henry. I did not learn anything else.”

There is a very long pause, everyone searching for what to say next. It is broken by the sound of someone at the door, and they all leap around in battle readiness, but it turns out to only be Rufus, with the breakfast food that he was sent out to fetch. Jiya is clearly relieved that her gentleman friend was not assaulted, but Rufus startles at being greeted by four very on-edge vampires – then sees Jack, and leaps back. “Holy shit! Wasn’t that Gucci Guy from Bologna, the one who was following us? Is he _supposed_ to be here?”

“We’re not sure,” Jiya says hastily, hurrying forward. “Come on, I need to – yes.”

Indeed, they can hear her explaining in a low voice as the two of them go upstairs to serve the invalid Anton Sokolov his breakfast, which leaves Maria, Wyatt, and Jack alone in the foyer. Maria is still deeply tempted to sink her fangs into his jugular and see if his story stands up, but she can smell the truth on him; she knows the scent of liars, and this, at least, is not. “And yet,” she says at last. “You can still tell us nothing of what supposedly happened at Sept-Tours, whatever caused all of us to lose our memories?”

“As I said. It was long ago, I was young, and it could be dangerous if I did, nor can I be sure that I myself recall it correctly.” Jack seems to decide that she is not going to kill him, and sits down again, which – grudgingly – Maria deigns to allow. “You will want to know how I came to know what I do about Michael Temple. The answer is simple, that he recruited me. It was about six months ago. He turned up at my house one evening and said that he knew certain things about my past, and that it would be in my interests to cooperate with him. He was… very persuasive. I am sure you know that he can be. But that was when I first heard what happened to Christian, and it…”

Jack trails off, staring at the wall. It isn’t clear whether this is in sudden emotion or unwillingness to elaborate, but Wyatt frowns. “Temple asked me about Christian a while ago, here in Venice at one of our Congregation meetings. Insinuating that he knew something about that, or he could. Plus, now he has free run of the archives, including the unredacted versions of files. He’s probably digging up absolutely everything he can on us, every scrap of dirt, anyone who could tell him anything about our weak spots. So – yeah. If he found out that Jack was still around and connected with our family in the past, he would be interested.”

There is another pause, this time interrupted by the return of Jiya and Rufus. Rufus eyes Jack very leerily, as apparently the story sounds flimsy to him too, and Maria finds herself thinking more warmly of the human scientist than she has done yet. His nerve is not in question after he accompanied them into the haunted dark under Poveglia, nor his devotion to her granddaughter. But Jiya is a vampire, Maria’s only living grandchild, and these are dangerous times even for immortals. If she truly did care for Rufus, it might be kinder to send him far away from her, from this, from them. Maria knows as well that Rufus would almost certainly refuse to go, but she cannot guarantee his safety, none of them can. Nor does she want to see her granddaughter forced to bear the agony of loss. Not like her.

“So,” Rufus says, clapping his hands sarcastically, which makes everyone jump. “We’re all caught up? Don’t really trust each other but here we are anyway, wahoo? Michael Temple still the world’s biggest asshat, film at eleven?”

“Jack was just explaining how he met him,” Wyatt says. “Blackmail, apparently. He’s been digging up all our worst secrets for as long as he can. Quick, everyone look surprised.”

“That’s not good,” Jiya says, stating the obvious. “But then – if he took _Cecilia –_ ”

“He doesn’t really need her for information,” Wyatt says grimly. He turns to pace, staring up at the elaborate walls, the priceless paintings, as the sound of Venice waking outside drifts through the tall curtained windows. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll try to get her to talk, because he’s a thorough son of a bitch and he’ll want his money’s worth. But mostly, he took her because he thinks that we’ll crumble without her. Or that we’ll band together and take any risk to get her back, that it’s easier than having to pick us off one by one, and once we’re there – it’ll be like with Papa, but this time, no mistakes. None of us leave alive.”

Maria feels a sudden uncertainty as to whether her legs will hold her up, and has to sink into the nearest armchair while looking as if she meant to do that. To Jack, she says, “And where have you been living, exactly?”

“Many places.” Jack meets her gaze forthrightly. “But Temple found me at my flat in Barcelona. We worked together on a few occasions, and then he told me to go to Oxford, that he had another operative he wanted me to meet. That’s why I traveled there, as I said, when Ashmole 782 was found.”

Rufus frowns. “Would that operative be named Jessica Proctor, by any chance? A witch?”

Wyatt grimaces, which he tries to conceal, but not fast enough for Maria not to notice. She stares sharply at her son as he does his best to look nonchalant, and yet nobody is entirely surprised when Jack nods. “Yes, that’s her,” he says. “We were supposed to coordinate, and Temple made particular use of Jessica. She and her daughter – ”

At that, they are interrupted by a loud crash as Wyatt knocks a porcelain urn off the sideboard, which smashes onto the floor in a thousand pieces. It was very expensive, Maria thinks they bought it in the 1700s, but its destruction is currently beside the point. Wyatt looks as if he’s seen a ghost. “I beg – I _beg_ your pardon,” he stammers. “Excuse me. Jessica has a – _what?”_

“A daughter?” Jack looks as if this is an entirely normal thing that many people have, so he can’t see why this is such a shock. “Do you know her?”

Wyatt continues to look flattened. “None of us – ” he starts at last. “None of us heard anything about – I mean – yes, we’ve known her, we – ”

“Where is she?” Jack asks. “She’s been missing for a while, hasn’t she?”

Jiya and Rufus exchange a look distinctly as if they are trying not to say anything, which piques Maria’s suspicions still further. Finally, Jiya says, “Jessica isn’t – she’s not in the present anymore. The reason we were in Bologna is because Rufus’s TimeMaster 3000 gizmo discovered her book in the university archives, and – I’m sorry, _daughter?”_

“Yes. She is about six years old. Her name is Sarah.” Jack frowns. “Jessica’s what? She’s where? I knew you had to be in the archives for a reason, but I thought it was related to your father and his wife. What’s this about a book?”

Wyatt looks as if he’s on the verge of panic. For her part, Maria is starting to piece things together: the inexplicable lacunae, their mysterious behavior, the overhanging question of who attacked Gabriel, and the fact that it was a witch, a witch in Michael Temple’s thrall, who they seemed oddly eager that she never confront, never see, never make them pay for what they did to her son. Lucy Preston can timewalk, they all know this. If this – if they – if they conspired to protect Jessica Proctor from what Maria suddenly is quite sure that she did, thrall or no thrall – if Wyatt chose this witch, _again,_ and her crimes – it is enough that Garcia seems set on attaching himself to one, though Lucy at least did not outright try to kill him –

She can barely speak, her fists clenching onto the arms of the chair until she hears the wood creak in danger of shattering, as she suddenly rues coming here at all and is on the verge of breaking out and burning the world down until she finds Cecilia, no matter the risk. Cecilia is the closest thing she has to a life companion after Asher, the only person that Maria can confide in – and yet if Cecilia knew this too, or at least strongly suspected, she never said. She has always been the guardian of the de Clermonts’ secrets, even and especially from the other de Clermonts, and Maria wrestles with a gut-wrenching sense of betrayal, of agony and desolation, that Asher and Gabriel have left her, _left_ her, and she can fully trust none of them again. She says, in a voice that barely sounds like hers, “Daughter?”

 _“Maman._ ” Wyatt moves as if to put himself between her and the others. “Wait. Listen. She – if she’s – if she’s six, she – but it can’t, it can’t be – a witch and a vampire, it – ”

“Wait.” Jack is a few steps behind, but by the vehemence of their reaction, he is swiftly puzzling it out. “Jessica – she was – you two were – ? Isn’t that against the – ”

“The Covenant?” Wyatt finishes bitterly. “Yeah, it damn well was, and I never heard the end of it even after she broke it off. Are you – are you serious? A daughter?”

“Obviously.” Jack gets to his feet. “Now that I think of it, she looks a great deal like you.”

Wyatt looks like he’s been punched. Rufus and Jiya are standing there with their mouths open, as if they are madly reeling through the sum total of their past interactions with Jessica to see if this makes any sense, until Jiya says, “When he came back to Oxford, Dad was trying to figure out what Temple was blackmailing Jessica with, to make her break into our lab. He said it didn’t seem like it was just her, or her past relationship with Uncle Wyatt, or whatever else. It was more serious. Like she was… scared.”

“A mixed-race supernatural kid that is eighty different kinds of against the law, with her vampire ex whose family he’s trying to wipe off the face of the earth?” Rufus glances awkwardly at Wyatt, as if to apologize for putting his business out there like that, but that is inexorably what the conclusion is leading to. “Yeah, I’d say he’d have incentive.”

“But this – ” Wyatt is the one who has to sit down, which he does, half-collapsing, as Jiya takes pity on her uncle and goes over to sit next to him. “This – this _can’t –_ ”

“It is possible,” Jack says. “Rare, but possible. The offspring of vampires and witches are known as Bright Born. A special kind of creature with particular abilities. That is what Ashmole 782 itself is made of.”

Everyone looks sharply at him, but the scale of the bombshell he’s dropped is still too great to focus on much else. Jack, for his part, obviously didn’t realize that they had no idea, and can be seen deciding if this is going to be a larger problem than anticipated. Maria has no idea what she should do. If this young Sarah Proctor _is_ her granddaughter, what does this mean? She wants to tear apart the witch who attacked her sons and nearly killed Gabriel, she is certain that they have plotted to keep Jessica from her by having Lucy send her into the past, which has now caused more complications – and then what? Murder Jessica before their eyes, give into the monster that she has been and could be again? Maria does not regret what she did, but she knows very well that it was monstrous. And yet, if Michael Temple is so arrogant about his chances of success because Asher de Clermont is gone – indeed, he kept his distance all these centuries because he was justly afraid of him – then perhaps Maria needs it again.

“So if Jessica’s gone, and has been gone for a while,” Rufus says at last. “Where’s her daughter?”

“Temple must have her too,” Jiya says urgently. “Jesus, that would also explain why Jessica wrote the book, why she wanted people to know where she was, why she’s creating so many ripples in history. She’s trying to get back to her daughter, and she’ll do anything she has to. She was even willing to take the risk of Temple finding her and coming to get her, since it would at least take her back to where – and when – Sarah was.”

“But this – ” Rufus is, after all, a scientist, and thus still hung up on the biology of this. He turns to Wyatt. “I’m sorry, aren’t you, you know? Dead? How can you make a presumably non-dead baby? Isn’t this the really horrifying part of _Twilight?”_

Before Wyatt can explain why this is an offensive thing to say to a vampire on multiple levels, Maria spins around, which makes everyone fall precipitately silent. The sight of Asher’s sigil on the letter, on the broken tomb under Poveglia, about what he told her about its occupant and swore her never to repeat, is coming together in her head. “It’s possible,” she says. “More than that, it is the reason the Covenant exists in the first place, at least partly. The intention was that there never be another capable of challenging him.”

“Him?” Jiya looks as if she’s going to ask, and then decides that she doesn’t need to. “Whatever – whoever – was originally in the tomb where we found Anton? The one that Rufus called Nightmare Boy? You said that Grand-père couldn’t kill him.”

“Indeed.” Maria almost laughs, cold as winter. Even now, she cannot help but feel that she is unforgivably transgressing her darling’s word, but it is different, it is all different now, and that time is over. “The man’s name was David Rittenhouse. He was born in the eighteenth century of a prominent witch family, but was turned into a vampire later in life, and acquired some daemon abilities as well. He had a prominent role in founding the Congregation and promoting its exclusionary policies, the writing and drafting of the Covenant, all in the name of ensuring peace between creatures and a brighter future for all. By the time they realized that his chief objective was to eliminate all resistance and rule the supernatural world for eternity, he was too strong for any but one to challenge him. Your grandfather, of course. Asher fought him for nearly a week, finally defeated him, and forced him into permanent imprisonment, in hopes of finding a spell powerful enough to unmake him. The Congregation ordered Rittenhouse’s name and memory erased so no one could ever find him, know of their shame at being associated with him, or how close he came to taking over everything. But why change the Covenant, or the other laws, when they worked so well to keep them in power? They just told themselves, I imagine, that now they were doing it _right.”_

“And now he’s – ” Rufus stops, looks alarmed, then deeply exasperated. “See, I _told_ you it was clearly supreme evil that had been unleashed down there!”

Jiya and Jack exchange an involuntary look, as if they have had the same thought and are unsure if they should defer to the other to voice it first. It is the former who proceeds. “Ashmole 782 can unmake creatures,” Jiya says. “Dad’s always thought so. If we got it, we could stop Rittenhouse for good. Even Grand-père didn’t have that. Except Rittenhouse has broken free – or rather, Temple set him free – and we don’t know where he is. Or when.”

“Christ.” Jack looks as if something else has occurred to him as well. _“Rittenhouse?_ I remember that name. I was his thrall, he drank my blood to restore his strength and body. Lord Asher broke that spell on me, but it would have to be the Rittenhouse that traveled to the past from here. He is – he was – in 1590 with the others, with your father and stepmother and all of them. He was set free to hunt them down.”

Nobody can disagree with this conclusion, not even Maria, no matter how much they want to. She is once more rocked by the casual mention of Asher, the fact that he did know Jack as a child and freed him from Rittenhouse’s dark sway, and it builds in her chest like a silent scream, the fact that everyone else has somehow managed to see Asher again through time and space and death, and she has not. She reaches out for the letters with their impersonal address – _To those who receive this message –_ and tucks them into her pocket. She can sense Wyatt watching her, terrified that she will turn on him, she will shout about Jessica and this great deception, that she will insist the witch be murdered no matter if she is the mother of Maria’s grandchild or not. _Does_ Maria want it? She does, and she does not, and she _does,_ and she still _could –_ Maria de Clermont, the witch-killer – and it is all too much. She wishes it would stop, and go away. She wishes they were all safe, and this was over. She wishes more than anything in her three thousand years of life that she could return to Sept-Tours, and her husband would be in their marital bed atop their tower, and she could crawl into his arms, and sleep.

There is a very, very long silence. Nobody seems to know what to do next. The matter of Cecilia remains outstanding, even if Maria is quite sure that Wyatt is correct about it being an obvious trap for the de Clermonts. They will not find Temple if they laboriously search for his hideout for hand, but then, if it _is_ a trap, he will have left breadcrumbs, a trail to follow, luring them craftily in so he can settle them once and for all. Especially if he has Sarah as well, has plucked her up and swept her away after her mother did not come home –

Maria feels no particular attachment to the child, not yet. But she discovers that even among the wrack and ruin of her blackened old heart, she cannot unqualifiedly wish death and destruction on her, or prolonged exposure to the dubious delights of Michel of Antioch’s company. And after all, they do have one remaining card to play. That must be settled, and then perhaps they will understand what is to be done after that. Perhaps.

Briefly, Maria wonders if there is any way to avert what seems destined to happen at Sept-Tours, if it is another tragedy on the scale of Christian’s death, a full-scale attack or worse. If that is when the past de Clermonts lose their memories, their recollection of having met Lucy or that any of this was changed, it has to be something terrible indeed. Did Asher write those notes and hide them specifically because they were in the middle of some dread melee, and he might not get another chance? Or was it just because Garcia and Lucy told him that they were from the future, that everyone was in danger, and he knew there would be need for it?

Maria’s heart shakes at the thought that even from centuries ago, Asher is fighting to save their family, that while he is still dead here, he is not gone, he has seen their son again and met his wife and saved Jack and written this letter. It gives her hope that she has not done the wrong thing in telling the others about Rittenhouse, and she struggles to compose herself. She is the matriarch, the queen, the head of the family. She cannot crumble now.

A moment more, she lets herself grieve, the widow and the old woman and the bereaved mother, all that she has lost, all that she might still. Then, as before, she sets aside the girl’s crown of flowers, and places on the steel. Widowed Persephone might be, and yet she is more beautiful and terrible and majestic for it. The white orchids grow on Hades’ tomb, the Lord of the Dead brought low by death himself, and yet, somehow, his queen endures. Always.

“Jack,” Maria says calmly. “If you would. You are going to call Michael Temple.”

* * *

There is really no way to make a golem in one day. Even the speeded-up, black-magic version generally requires at least two weeks, and if they are going to prevent Rittenhouse from his robbery tonight, they are already so laughably far behind the 8-ball that it might be wiser not to try at all. But Lucy is driven and determined, and while it may be possible that Rittenhouse himself is not ready to carry out the robbery and is bluffing them into overreacting and showing their hand exactly like this, she’s not going to take the chance. And as she stares at Meg sprawled on the floor, an even darker thought comes to her. The golem needs a body. They have a body. If the _shem_ serves to animate a lump of dead clay into a functioning simulacrum of a human, why wouldn’t it work to –

At that, Lucy catches herself, horrified. After Rittenhouse just carelessly murdered Meg once she had served her purpose as a thrall, they are not, are _not,_ going to turn around and use her freshly deceased corpse in even more unholy fashion. The poor woman needs to be decently mourned and buried, and word sent to Asher in London with the next messenger, so he can make arrangements for Meg’s sister and her family in Islington. Lucy strides across the room, shouts for Parry and Karl, and they – having already been en route after hearing the disturbance – arrive with gawks and stares of shock. Karl sizes up the grisly scene, mouth grim, then turns on Lucy. “What’d you do now, Mistress?”

That _Mistress_ sounds barely this side of polite, and Lucy is in no mood for Karl’s backtalk. She raises a hand, having some idea of Force-choking him, and while she doesn’t get quite that far, the magic hits him in an invisible broadside hard enough to make him stagger. His eyes go wide, he adopts an obsequious “only joking” expression, and he and Parry busy themselves in covering Meg with a sheet and trying to make sure Jack isn’t around to see this. Lucy stands there, rocking back and forth on her heels, possessed with the need to do more, and jumps a foot when a hand lands on her shoulder, gripping gently but just hard enough to restrain. _“Moja ljubav,”_ Flynn says, low in her ear. “What are you doing?”

“I said, I’m going to make a golem.” Lucy turns sharply to face him, as Rabbi Loew strides to the windows, pulling the curtains closed, in the traditional Jewish preparation to sit shiva for the dead. They don’t have time for that either, but since she has asked for his help in doing something dangerous and not exactly (so to speak) kosher, she doesn’t demur. “If Rittenhouse is going after Ashmole 782 tonight – ”

They know that this is like Voldemort going after the Philosopher’s Stone, almost literally, since both are mystic alchemical objects supposed to prescribe eternal life and thus of great interest to quasi-immortal evil wizards. She is nonplussed, therefore, to see Flynn frown. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? If Gabriel and I went to Kelley’s and kept watch, or if – ”

“The two of you can’t stop Rittenhouse,” Lucy says flatly. “Remember, Asher fought him in Essex and he had his hands full, and that was when Rittenhouse was only just some half-formed shadow monster. Now he has a proper body and he can possess people and whatever else – Garcia, we _can’t_ let him get it!”

“I know, all right? I know.” Flynn keeps hold of her shoulder with one hand, and lifts her chin with the other, making her look up at him. “That’s not an option, I promise. But you heard what Loew said about dark magic, and I don’t think even we – ”

“Come on, _you’re_ not the one talking to me about dark magic.” Of all the times for Flynn to develop scruples, Lucy isn’t a fan of this one. “We didn’t see this coming, we don’t have time to come up with a better plan, and if you think I’m putting you, or Gabriel, or Christian, or anyone else in the way, you’re crazy. I made this choice. I’ll deal with it. By myself, if I have to, but – ”

“Don’t be stupid. You know I’m not letting you do this alone.” Flynn’s grip tightens, and she can sense that even he is somewhat frightened. “I just – Lucy, I – ”

“I know what I’m doing.” She doesn’t, but Lucy has been the only one doing anything useful since they got here, she’s the one who understands what’s happening and has been prepared to face up to it. She is the one who dealt with Widemann and Kelley, marched into the palace and the booksellers and the Karolinum and the synagogue, matched wits with Rudolf and Rabbi Loew and anyone else she needed, and she isn’t going to stop now. Glancing over at said rabbi, she adds, “We need clay for a golem, don’t we? I know it’s not the right moon-phase, but if we got some of it now – ”

“Ordinarily it is clay, yes.” Rabbi Loew inspects her with an expression she can’t quite read. “If you are set on this course of action, then I will transliterate the formula for you, but you are the one who must read and execute it. I warned you that it was dangerous, and while I do not believe in making another’s choice for them, I myself can refrain from making the same.”

“Do that,” Lucy says, a little too much like a sergeant-major, and then modifies her tone. “If you would, please, Rabbi. I’m a witch. I think I can manage it.”

Rabbi Loew eyes her a moment longer, then nods graciously, and decamps to the study. Flynn and Gabriel glance at each other, then silently volunteer themselves to go dig some clay, changing out of their fine noblemen’s clothes and returning in the rough garb of common workmen, hauling spades and buckets. Christian has gone to comfort Jack, who has evidently learned what became of Mistress Broxton, and the rest of the household is trying to make arrangements and send someone off for enquiries about burial. In this summer heat, the body won’t keep long, and Lucy does not want to see if Rittenhouse can also continue to use Meg as a compliant zombie. Everyone else is doing something, she should find the same, and turns around with this intention, whereupon she almost crashes into Agnes. The older witch looks alarmed, grabbing at her arm. “Meg, the poor lass – she’s dead?”

“Yes.” Lucy knows, she _knows_ that while Rittenhouse might have pulled the trigger, this is still her fault. She put off confronting Meg or doing anything about it or fixing this, and while Flynn also advocated for acting as if nothing was wrong, the benefit of hindsight makes very clear that that was a big mistake. It just gave Rittenhouse more time to spy on them, to learn more of their secrets and their plans, and Lucy is burning with all the frustration and fury and fear that has stalked her footsteps since she got here. They are not doing enough, they’re constantly a step or three or half a dozen behind their enemies, and if it means taking the training wheels off, it’s about bloody time. “She was also Rittenhouse’s thrall, and none of us noticed. He was using her to gather information on us, and then he killed her.”

Agnes looks shocked, crossing herself. “And now you’re planning to use that auld Jew’s – ?”

“Yes,” Lucy says again, even more shortly. “Are you going to help me or not?”

Agnes glances at her, as if judging her chances at stopping her even if she decided otherwise. Then she says, “If it’s someone to keep an eye on Kelley’s house that ye need, I’d use your familiar. I can add power to it and interpret its reports, if ‘twould be a help to ye.”

“I – yes, I suppose.” Lucy has never sent the firedragon off on an actual mission, but they need all hands on deck. She closes her eyes, concentrating hard, until the warmth wells in her chest, metallic sparks burst in her mouth, and the room lights with eerie magical fire as the drake swans free. It resembles a Chinese kite, swirling around Lucy’s head, and regards her with a gaze like golden embers. As before, Lucy has the feeling that it’s not an it, it’s a _she,_ part of her but also possessing sentience on its own. “I need you to go to Edward Kelley’s house and keep watch,” she says, not sure if she needs to give orders out loud or she can just think them. “If you see anything, come back to Mistress Sampson at once.”

The firedrake dips her shining head in acknowledgement of her mistress’s command, then turns into a streak of light and shoots out the window. Her effectiveness will decrease the further away she is from Lucy, but Kelley’s house just on the other side of the river isn’t too far, and Lady Beaton said that some witches’ familiars can ramble for miles across the countryside. If Rittenhouse does turn up there, presumably they will know, even if it’s less clear if there’s anything they can do about it. But one problem at a time.

The rest of the morning trickles away. Rabbi Loew emerges from the solar around noon, cuffs considerably ink-stained, and hands Lucy a scroll with the translated spell. As for the _shem_ itself, that is trickier. “It must be written in your own blood, Lady Clairmont,” he warns. “I told you that this path required sacrifice, and knitting your blood with the clay of the creature and the power of a fell spirit will not leave you unaltered. A white queen can turn to black, and that is a color not easily scrubbed out. One last time, are you sure?”

“Yes,” Lucy says fiercely. “What, you don’t think this is ladylike?”

At that, the rabbi smiles. “I have a wife and six daughters,” he says wryly. “I am well acquainted with the mind of a determined woman. I would ask you precisely the same question if you were a man. More so, I think, for women are often aware of the cost of the power that they wield and from whence it ultimately springs, far more so than men. If you are resolved, come with me, and see we are not disturbed.”

Lucy pauses, then nods, and follows him back to the study, where they bar the door, and Rabbi Loew unrolls a clean scroll of parchment and removes a small knife from his robes. “This will hurt. That is the price of magic, that it must not be used without awareness of what it is and what it can do, and never lightly or frivolously. Give me your left arm, please.”

Lucy rolls up the sleeve of her dress and does so, turning her face away. She has been known to faint at the sight of blood before, and doesn’t have much interest in large quantities of her own, even for a greater purpose. She’s just wondering if the left has some significance – _gauche, sinistra,_ all the words meaning _left_ which also mean _bad,_ the ritual uncleanliness of left hands, the way in which kids were up until recently beaten if they didn’t write right-handed, the proper hand to use in dark magic – when the knife cuts into the inside of her arm, and pain like fire sears through her. She manages not to scream, but it’s close.

She can hear the wet splashes as the blood falls on the parchment, as Rabbi Loew intently writes out a complicated series of characters before it can dry. Lucy can feel each one as if it’s also being carved into her flesh, and grits her teeth, eyes watering, resisting the urge to ask how long until it’s done. She was the one who chose this, after all, and he has given her ample opportunity to back out or say otherwise. He has agreed to help them on his own terms, to rid the city of Edward Kelley and now of David Rittenhouse, but he’s made clear that it’s still a considerable risk, and the consequences are entirely her responsibility.

At last, Loew finishes the incantation, pulls out a bandage, and hands it to Lucy to wrap around her arm. She does so, nestling the wounded appendage against her stomach, reminded suddenly of Emma Whitmore torturing her in the ruined castle near Albi, in the south of France. Flynn and Gabriel rescued her that time, but it left her with the now-mostly-faded scars on her back and her magic changed, unlocked and far more powerful than before, the spellbind broken, the white queen rising. She is changing this time again, she knows that. Into what, she can’t be sure. Black, as Rabbi Loew said, does not easily wash out.

Once she has used a small spell to get the bleeding stopped, though her arm still aches like the possibly actual devil, Lucy returns to the front of the house, just in time to see the disaster brothers tramping in from their clay-collecting exploits. Both of them are carrying two large and heavy buckets brimming with earth freshly dug from the Vltava riverbanks, spectacularly filthy from head to heel, and Flynn uses his chin to greet her. “Where the hell should we put this?”

“This way.” Lucy leads them back to the study, where Rabbi Loew has spread a cloth over the table and is awaiting delivery of the raw material. Flynn and Gabriel hoist the buckets up effortlessly and dump them on, and stand there watching until Lucy instructs them to go get washed. Once they’re gone, she turns back to Loew. “Now what?”

“As you are to command it, you should help me sculpt it.” Loew moves around the clay, considering it carefully. “We must reserve a small portion for the eye, but there is more than a sufficient amount to make a man-sized golem. The Lord fashioned a man from clay, and called him Adam, and names give a creature meaning, purpose. What will you call it?”

“I….” Lucy hesitates. “I’ll let you choose.”

Rabbi Loew raises an eyebrow. “Josef,” he says, after a pause. “Or as my people would also say, Yossele. Come then, we must fashion it.”

It takes several hours of hard, heavy, dirty work, periodically fetching water to keep the clay moist enough to be sculpted, as they try to mold it into a somewhat-accurate likeness of a man. Neither of them are Michelangelo, and Lucy can’t help but feel that it will be extremely unsettling when it is alive. The more refined it is, the more complex tasks it will be able to carry out, and finally she calls in Flynn to pose as a model. She’s not sure that it won’t be even creepier to have the clay man look like her husband, but she can’t do a face from scratch, and the golem wandering around with two rough holes for eyes and a slash for a mouth would absolutely put everyone on their guard. Besides, if she is having her essence intertwined with anyone’s, it might as well be his.

The sun has vanished behind the townhouses by the time the golem is more or less complete. It is a herculean task, completely unheard of, and even Rabbi Loew is not immune to the pride of his accomplishment, wiping his grimy face on the sleeve of his even grimier robes and regarding the clay figure with quiet satisfaction. Lucy hasn’t eaten since breakfast and is faint with hunger and exhaustion, her arm throbbing, and she has seen Flynn’s eyes darting worriedly to the bandage. Still, they can’t stop now. She gulps the last of the water to wet her whistle, runs over the pronunciation of the more obscure characters, and waits as Rabbi Loew carves two eyes out of the remaining clay. Then she stands up and staggers, and Flynn flashes in to catch her elbow. “Lucy,” he says. “Do you want me to do this?”

“I’m the witch,” Lucy says. “I’m the one who should do it.”

Flynn hesitates, doesn’t quite let go of her arm, and she wonders just how bad she looks. Not relevant, not when they’ve come this far. She clears her throat, waits until Rabbi Loew has inserted the eye and stood back, and unrolls the scroll. With no more ado, she begins to read.

There isn’t a pentacle or a constraining circle or anything else, but Lucy half-wonders if there should be. The thick evening air gutters and flickers, strange shadows pass over the floor without reference to the blood-red, westering sun, and she can feel something climbing up her spine with cold fingers, step by step. It’s clear why Rabbi Loew didn’t want to do this himself, but Lucy Diana Preston does not have time to be afraid. She’s faced down more than enough by now, and this barely feels about rightness, not now. Only necessity.

At last, voice cracking, throat feeling burned, she finishes the incantation, then takes the _shem_ and holds it above the golem’s open mouth. It looks more human now, its clay body cast in enough likeness of flesh that nobody will notice if they aren’t looking carefully. Lucy says the last part of the spell, and thrusts the _shem_ in, snapping its jaws shut. For a second, two, three, nothing seems to happen, as Flynn and Rabbi Loew observe in tense silence. She can’t tell if they’re impressed, or waiting to rush in and institute emergency measures, whatever those may be, if something went wrong.

After another few seconds, the golem stirs. Slowly at first, and then all at once, sitting up. Its eyes are painted – one is the magical one that she will see through, the other just fashioned to match – and don’t focus like a human’s, gazing at Lucy with a placid, blank, puppet stare. Her blood animates it, her spell has woken it; it knows her for its mistress, and it awaits her command. Lucy is aware that this is very much not white magic, that even if she is using it for objectively good reasons, she has put more than several toes over the line, and reminds herself that the thrill she feels, the realization of pure _power,_ is exactly why she needs to be careful. If she managed to create a golem in one day – with a lot of help, but still – then she too, just like Rittenhouse, is only beginning to discover what she’s really capable of. And if that’s what it might take to bring him down –

“Lucy,” Flynn says. He sounds slightly nervous again. “Lucy, you need to give it an order.”

“Right.” Lucy coughs, her throat still tasting burned, and raises her voice. “Josef. You will go to the house of the alchemist Edward Kelley, in Malá Strana, attracting no notice, and wait until Kelley and his household are asleep. Then you will enter his workshop by the most secret methods possible, disturbing no one, and remove an alchemical manuscript known as the Book of Life. If there is a man or entity named David Rittenhouse there, in competition with you, you will do everything in your power to prevent him from having it.”

Josef considers this, then inclines its – even with Flynn’s face, which is in fact very unsettling, she can’t quite think of it as _his –_ head. It lumbers past them, still unsteady on its clay feet, finding its stride somewhat as it reaches the hall, and Rabbi Loew hands Lucy the other eye. “You will watch and command it through this.”

Lucy raises it to her face, peering as if into a telescope, as suddenly she can see the evening streets of Prague from the golem’s point of view. It has been given a cloak and a hat so its uncanny inhumanness is not quite as visible, and most people don’t look twice at it. It does blunder enough that it knocks rudely into a few passersby, who turn as if to chide it, before something makes them think better. It manages to reach Kelley’s house without incident, and remains strategically out of sight, just around the corner, as Lucy strains to see if it’s been broken into. Not yet, but Rittenhouse will also need to choose his moment carefully.

It takes a while to get fully dark. Flynn urges Lucy to leave the solar and come down to have something to eat, which she does distractedly, one-handedly, still holding the eye up to her face to make sure she doesn’t miss anything. She is vaguely aware of Gabriel and Christian keeping them company, apparently for moral support, though nobody has much to say and can clearly tell that she will not pay any attention. Once or twice, she sees movement at Kelley’s house, but it’s just the ordinary errands of the servants. Eventually, the lamps and torches start to go out, and the windows turn dark, peaceful and untroubled. If Rittenhouse _is_ coming, he isn’t here yet.

Lucy waits until she’s sure that the household is asleep, then watches as Josef makes its way inside, raising its powerful clay hands and snapping the lock off the gates like a twig. It opens it and slips through as quietly as an enchanted clay man can, darting into the shadows of the courtyard when a dog lifts its head to bark. Once the coast is clear, it pulls the tower door open and starts up the steep steps. Lucy wants to turn her head and look behind, to see what might be following, but she can’t, not unless Josef does. There is a door at the top, also locked, but which is similarly no trouble for the golem to break into. Lucy scans for genuinely magical wards or tricks or traps, but Kelley is, after all, a charlatan. There are plenty of impressive-looking symbols painted on the door, promising dire doom and destruction for any who dare to enter the alchemist’s laboratory, but none of them do a damn thing to prevent Josef.

Now, finally, they are through. They might be moments from acquiring Ashmole 782 at long last, or fighting Rittenhouse directly for it, and Lucy has to play Josef like a video-game character who has no lives left. From what she can see through the golem’s eye, Kelley’s inner sanctum looks as appropriately mystical as you would expect. Narrow wooden shelves rise into the steep gabled ceiling, packed cheek by jowl with leather-bound books, and in the workroom next door, unknown substances bubble and boil in leaded beakers, glass pipes, and ornate crucibles, bundled of dried herbs hung from the ceiling rafters. Lucy has to be careful about maneuvering Josef through the clutter, as knocking anything over will cause it to break and very possibly a fire. Aside from the risk of detection, that means that Ashmole 782 itself could go up in flames, and that, after all this trouble, would be a very stupid thing indeed.

She manages to avoid that, at least, and walks the golem over to the table at the other end of the attic. It is heaped with open books, and she commands Josef to search through them. She remembers what Ashmole 782 looks like from the Bodleian, of course, and the remains of the pages that they have, but it could also look nothing like itself. It was written and rewritten and re-enchanted at least once, hiding its true text within the pages, and Lucy is consumed by a sudden fear that she’s looking right at it and can’t tell. She may not get another chance. Should she just command Josef to scoop them all up and run?

She is so deep in the golem’s head by now that she is barely aware of her own body, back in the room with Flynn and Gabriel and Christian, and dimly hopes that she hasn’t passed out or something else alarming. Hopefully they will know not to interfere, though Flynn is clearly jittery about letting her get this deep into the black-magic side of the ledger. Not necessarily that he objects, but just that he would prefer to do it himself, rather than see her go through it. Lucy doesn’t know if he thinks she’s some virtuous white virgin (part of that, at least, he is well aware that she is not) who has never done anything wrong in her life, but if she is on a pedestal in his head, maybe it’s not the worst thing that she takes a step down. That, or –

She can’t be entirely sure, but none of these manuscripts look like Ashmole 782, and while Josef doesn’t have her magic, it’s still part of her and should be able to sense it. Lucy turns around and walks back to the books, trying to fight a low-level panic. It will take her all night to look through all of them one by one, and it _should_ be here. Besides, to state the obvious, even Kelley will be aware that his laboratory has been broken into by then, and catching an honest-to-God golem snooping through his things will confirm all his worst suspicions. But that is the least of Lucy’s problems. Why isn’t it here? They have been keeping watch on Kelley’s place all day, first with the firedrake and then with Josef. If Rittenhouse had gotten here first, they would know.

Did one of the servants leave with it, Lucy wonders wildly? Did they smuggle it out, did Rittenhouse enthrall one of Kelley’s underlings too – or even Kelley himself? He might not have needed to, promised ultimate power if Kelley would be so kind to share the manuscript with him. Or just stolen it at an earlier date – but he can’t have. _I have a book to fetch first._ He didn’t know enough about Ashmole 782 before today. What is – how can this – what is –

At that moment, there’s a noise from behind Josef, the scrape of a door and a strangled, outraged shout, and the golem – not being human, not knowing how to react, does not turn around until Lucy orders it to do so. Upon doing so, it comes face to face with Edward Kelley in his cap and nightshirt, barefoot and holding a lantern, goggling at this bizarre interloper. “What in God’s name?” he demands. “What is this foul devilry? Stand and account thyself, sir, or I shall have you seized and thrown into the deepest – ”

The golem and Kelley stare at each other for an endless moment. Lucy can see the realization forming in the alchemist’s eyes, that it’s not human and it has been sent here for an express purpose, and doesn’t wait to see the rest of it. She turns Josef around, runs it across the room, and dives directly out of the third-story window, parasailing free in a spectacular shower of glass and plummeting toward the cobbles below. She has just enough time to hope that this doesn’t smash its clay body to bits, but golems are supposed to be impervious to ordinary damages, and indeed, it doesn’t so much as leave a scratch. Josef swerves upright, as lights are coming on in Kelley’s house along with a great deal of shouting. It runs as fast as it can down the street and up the hill, putting distance between it and the break-in, but Lucy has no idea if it is far enough. If the golem is indeed caught and identified as such, with Hebrew characters on the _shem_ in its mouth, there is going to be trouble. She already knew that, and she absolutely cannot have Rabbi Loew and the Jews of Prague hurt for helping her. Black magic comes with more of a cost than usual, but she will pay it herself. Not them.

Josef runs until Kelley’s house has faded in the darkness, but now it is in the castle district, close to Rudolf’s court, and the royal guards are probably vigilant about defending the emperor from lurking nocturnal threats. Josef dodges behind a nearby wall so as not to be spotted, but as Lucy waits tensely, braced for shouts, she doesn’t hear them. The night is oddly silent. There’s a guard right there. He must have seen Josef. Why isn’t he saying anything? Why isn’t he making a single sound?

It is a bad idea, but she doesn’t have a choice. She maneuvers Josef out of hiding, as the golem ventures warily up to the soldier guarding the portcullis. He’s standing upright and staring straight ahead, which makes it all the more baffling that he hasn’t shouted or moved or made any attempt to apprehend this strange man stumbling out of the night and demand what business he has at this hour. It takes an instant more, and then with a wave of revulsion that Lucy feels to the marrow of her bones, she realizes why. The guard is actually standing with his back to her. It’s just that his head has been turned around completely on his neck, a full hundred and eighty degrees, and since the human spinal cord obviously cannot survive that degree of extreme displacement, he is very definitely dead.

Bile burns in her mouth, as she is dimly aware of the others shaking her, frantically trying to wake her up, but she resists; she cannot be torn out of Josef’s head now. The golem pushes through the gate, unhindered, and finds two more guards on the far side, their heads just as grotesquely twisted, slumped where they were attacked with no time to fight back. Not that they would have stood a chance, not against what was attacking them. It strikes Lucy in a rush how stupid, how unforgivably, unbelievably _stupid_ they were, and now they are going to pay the price. They naïvely assumed that Kelley was keeping Ashmole 782 at his house, relatively unguarded, to work with it there. But she even met him in the castle chancellery, for God’s sake, and Kelley is Rudolf’s favorite alchemist, the darling of the court, ordered to produce miracles for the imperial amusement. Besides, he knows for sure now that dangerous rivals are in town, and was never going to take any risk of his prize, his one genuinely magical text that he went to such lengths to steal from Dee, being unceremoniously filched in turn. Here it has the full might of the Holy Roman Empire to keep it safe – for all the good that’s done now, but still. They’ve been looking in the wrong place all along. The manuscript was never at Kelley’s house. It was here, in Prague Castle. And now, as Josef runs through, Lucy can feel it. She knows, she knows, she _knows,_ and it makes her want to scream, even as her consciousness is burning out, she is plunging into a black abyss, and she is more than half convinced that this is it, it’s done, she’s dead, they all are. It is not enough. It is too late.

David Rittenhouse has Ashmole 782.


	16. The Midnight Hour

The summer night is still, hot, and smells faintly of blood as Gabriel and Garcia de Clermont hurtle up the steep streets of Hradčany as fast as they can possibly go. They being vampires, this is considerably faster than anyone else, but it is late enough that almost no one is out, and if they are, they will just have to wonder what that strange dark blur was, or the passing chill on the nape of their neck. Flynn hasn’t run like this in a long time, torn between absolute terror that they will be too late and a savage thrill at pushing himself to the limits, finally unchained, unleashed. He and Gabriel bound twenty or thirty feet at a time, fly from rooftop to rooftop, rattle the windows as they pass. But he can’t let himself get too distracted. Can’t let himself enjoy it, this, them. If he does, the entire supernatural world (and human world, for that matter) may be done for.

The only coherent thing Lucy managed to get out before she fell unconscious was something about David Rittenhouse – that he was at the castle, never at Kelley’s house, and he had Ashmole 782. She has worked herself to the point of abject and utter collapse, drained herself in blood and black magic alike, and Flynn’s worry for her gnaws like a toothless animal, something else he can’t fully give into if he is going to do what must be done. He and Gabriel had no choice but to throw on their cloaks, belt on their swords, and race out to launch a desperate, kamikaze midnight raid. This is, of course, exactly the sort of adventure that Christian has been hungering for, but it’s absurdly dangerous, they can’t fight at their ultimate level if they have to look after him, and he nobly volunteered to sacrifice his chance in order to stay at home and guard Lucy, Agnes, Jack, and Rabbi Loew (who may or may not need that much defending, but still). So Flynn and Gabriel anxiously hugged their son, told him to bar the door and not let anyone in until they returned, and booked it.

The moon flits in and out behind sullen clouds, bathing the crookback lanes and stone spires of Prague in enchanted quicksilver glow. Distant church bells strike half past eleven. The witching hour is coming in more ways than one, and Flynn also can’t think about the possibility that Rittenhouse will promptly abscond with Ashmole 782 in tow. That doesn’t seem like him, does it? This city holds too many riches to be quit without ceremony, not least Rudolf’s court, the alchemists, and the de Clermonts and company, all of whom Rittenhouse doubtless wants to enjoy tormenting. If by some miracle Gabriel and Flynn do get hold of the manuscript, which seems like too much luck to hope for but is their only chance to avert the magical apocalypse, Flynn’s not sure what they themselves would do. Run like the devil all the way to Sept-Tours and barricade the doors? They might have to, but Lucy and Christian and the others are back at the house. Flynn is willing to say fuck it and take the loss of the rest of his things – he’s not going to be here long enough to need them returned, anyway – but quite obviously, he will have to get back for his family at any cost.

The looming silhouette of the castle comes into sight, its gothic towers cut like dark velvet against the stars. The smell of blood is much stronger, and Flynn nearly loses his footing in a pool of it trickling down the steps. He jumps over it, jerks his head at Gabriel, and the two of them shortly arrive at the postern gate into the castle precincts. It is guarded, if you want to call it that, by a man with his head on backward.

Flynn screeches to a halt, fast enough that Gabriel almost runs into him, and swears under his breath. It is now obvious where the blood comes from, and he wonders if Rittenhouse has murdered everyone inside, including Rudolf. Assassinating the Holy Roman Emperor would absolutely fall under the heading of major changes to history, but everyone is in danger already, and Rittenhouse would probably prefer to keep Rudolf alive for any number of reasons. A puppet emperor would be very useful to him, especially at this magical court.

Nothing for it. They have to go in. Flynn pushes Backward-Head Man out of the way; he falls with an unpleasant squashy sound, and both of the de Clermonts draw their swords, proceeding shoulder to shoulder into the breach. It gives Flynn a brief flashback to the countless battlefields where they did the same, though the last full-scale fight they had against a single opponent of this danger was Gerbert of Aurillac in 1307. It gives him an odd sort of comfort to think that at least this Gabriel has done that too, that they will both remember how that went. It might be the only thing that saves their lives.

Inside, the castle courtyard is decorated with several more fallen guardsmen, also with their heads twisted around, because far be it from Rittenhouse to forget a special macabre finishing touch on all his kills. Across the way, Flynn sees someone standing in the shadows, gets a horrible shock to see that it has his own face, and then recognizes Josef the golem, slumped against the wall, inanimate and lifeless now that the connection with its mistress has been severed. This doesn’t feel like a good omen, but the night is already so steeped in eldritch horror that he’s just going to have to forget about it. They glance from side to side, unwilling to separate, on edge for any sign of attack or struggle from any quarter. Gabriel whispers, “Where do you think the bastard went, darling?”

“Not sure.” Flynn scans the upper windows tensely – surely _someone_ must notice that an evil undead fiend has burst in and murdered a large quantity of guardsmen? He struggles with the fact that now is not the time to be put out over the fact that Gabriel must know where Rudolf’s bedchamber is located. “Do you think we should check on the emperor?”

Gabriel considers, then decides that this time, the emperor can shift for himself. They dash across the courtyard, beneath the towering stone brows of St Vitus Cathedral, and Flynn glances at the heavy doors, which stand half open. It would be nice to think that Rittenhouse could not set an unholy foot inside without being fried to a crisp, but since the mythology is similarly inaccurate when it comes to vampires, they cannot count on it. They have to start the search somewhere, it is a moot point whether they wake the castle (they might all be slaughtered in their sleep otherwise) and after a final look at each other, they charge in.

Flynn has been to St Vitus a few times before, most notably in 1875 when he was in Prague and bought the Ashmole fragment with Lucy’s handwriting on it, in 1942 when he was part of the assassination of Nazi high commander and leading architect of the Holocaust Reinhard Heydrich, and in 1995 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, when the castle had been newly reopened to visitors. Each time, it was bustling with other people, except for perhaps 1942, and Flynn tries not to think of that, part of the family’s ferocious search for Asher after he had gone missing early that year. The de Clermonts had been living in exile in London after the fall of France, and even for a vampire, it was dangerous to be alone so far behind enemy lines. Ordinarily he might have been here exactly like this, with Gabriel, but at that point, he and Gabriel had barely spoken for a hundred and eighty years. After Heydrich was ambushed on his way to the castle and died of his infected wounds a week later, the Bohemian SS ruthlessly cracked down and Flynn had to flee back to England. He still second-guesses himself mercilessly for not staying longer, for not searching even harder, as if he might have found some vital clue that could have led them to Papa sooner. As it was, the next time he saw Gabriel was when the de Clermonts were sneaking into Normandy on D-Day, on a desperate last-ditch rescue mission, and the next time he saw Asher –

Flynn shakes his head, reminding himself that he will have his fill of present tragedies if he can’t get his mind off past ones. He reaches for Gabriel’s arm, partly to stop him from advancing too fast and partly to reassure himself that he’s there, and the two vampires glide soundlessly through the sanctuary. Large parts of the vaults remain unbuilt, and starlight slants through, the elegant arches of stained glass windows half-filled with jewel-bright panes. Scaffolding encloses the perpetually intending-to-be-started tower, and musty velvet banners embroidered with heraldry hang from the arches. Elaborate candelabras are stuffed thick with fat white tapers, spilling over like waxen waterfalls, and a lone red lamp hangs halfway down the left transept, indicating the Presence of the Host. Flynn and Gabriel both cross themselves, the ancestral Catholic reflex, though it’s been a very long time since they – or Flynn, at least, he doesn’t know about Gabriel – have taken a proper communion. He can, if he chooses. Physically, there is nothing stopping him. It just does not seem entirely honest.

In a few moments, they reach the front of the cathedral, the high altar, and the whispering night breeze that seems to come from the mouths of the serenely gazing saints. St Vitus has not reached its full height of baroque splendor, and the wall paintings and sculptures are still deeply medieval in character, some of them blackened around the edges where they had to be saved from the castle fire of 1541. Flynn and Gabriel look from side to side, poised to spring at any disturbance, aware of a certain desire to avoid sacrilegious brawling in a cathedral. But if necessary, that is exactly what they will do.

They turn in a careful circle, as Flynn has a sudden fear that Rittenhouse is perched like a bat on a high beam and will swoop down like a Fury. Given his previous attacks, this is not at all out of the realm of possibility. But still nothing. Lucy wouldn’t lie to them. Whatever she told them, it was what she saw through Josef’s eyes, and the backward heads confirm beyond a doubt that Rittenhouse has in fact paid a call. So what the devil does he –

“Ah,” a voice says. “You two have made it after all. How nice.”

Flynn and Gabriel flash around in unison, as the shadows shimmer and part in one of the side chapels, and – just as Jack described him the other day – an elderly gent in spectacles and a brown coat comes strolling out. In this body, at least, he does not resemble the most feared supernatural entity ever to exist. The gnarled fangs and black hellbeast wings are gone, he looks like an eighteenth-century gentleman of letters off to discuss Enlightenment philosophy in some refined salon, and as he comes to a halt and surveys them appraisingly, you could almost – almost – mistake him for human. But his eyes are pitch black, without pupil or iris, and when he smiles, the fangs, if somewhat tidier, are on full and formidable display. He raises his hands, clapping mockingly. “Asher de Clermont’s idiot sons, I presume? I _have_ been waiting so long for a proper meeting.”

Flynn throws out an arm, instinctively trying to put Gabriel behind him, even though Gabriel is the stronger of the two of them and has just been trying to do the same to him. Rittenhouse eyes this with a goading expression, as if he has just been served a delightful dish and can’t decide where to take his first bite. He raises a careless hand, and the doors of St Vitus boom shut, the bars rattling down into place. “Better if we are not disturbed, don’t you think?”

“You bastard,” Flynn says. “Where’s the manuscript?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Rittenhouse preens at him, odiously self-satisfied, all but dripping in his own ooze. Without visibly moving, he is suddenly six feet closer to them, and they startle, raising their swords and grabbing hold of each other’s free hands. Flynn is under no delusions that they can kill him, but if they can just hurt him enough – maybe one of them will have to charge him, buy the other enough time to find where he has stashed Ashmole 782. He _knew_ that Rittenhouse wanted to toy with them, play with his food before he ate it, but their father is not coming to save them this time, and neither is anybody else. Flynn is suddenly, abjectly grateful that they left Christian at home. What might happen if he was face to face with this monstrosity does not bear thinking of.

“In any event,” Rittenhouse goes on, when Flynn and Gabriel do not interrupt his villainous monologue, “the manuscript, while undoubtedly very valuable, was only part of my intention here tonight. You see, I have been trapped in a most unpleasant situation for the last few hundred years, and I have your miserable father to thank for that. Truly, never said anything about this to you? But then, I suppose he would not have.”

Gabriel flicks a confused sidelong look at Flynn, who is suddenly aware of a terror entirely unrelated to the thing in front of them. Obviously, this Gabriel only knows Rittenhouse as a threat from the future, something that this Garcia has brought with him, and is unfamiliar with anything that led up to that fight, what Asher did – or the events surrounding it. In hopes of forestalling any more of this story, Flynn decides to hell with it, they don’t need to listen to the jackass talk. He lowers his head and lunges at Rittenhouse, raising his sword to strike – and doesn’t even manage to land a blow before Rittenhouse clicks his fingers. A gale-force blast hits Flynn squarely amidships, sending him cartwheeling, and he slams into the pulpit and crashes down in a shower of splinters. He’s an old and considerably powerful vampire, he is entirely unused to being flicked like a flea, but that is what Rittenhouse just did to him. The sepulchral sounds of his laughter echo ominously through the cathedral, splitting and pealing down the aisles as if a thousand Rittenhouses laugh with him, as Gabriel leaps several pews in a single bound and lands frantically at Flynn’s side. “Jesus, darling. Are you – ”

“Fine, I’m fine.” Flynn needs an instant for the world to stop spinning, but he has a bad feeling that this will get much worse before it gets any better. “Look – whatever he’s going to say, whatever he’ll – he’s trying to drive a wedge between us, he – Papa defeats him, sometime in the future, and he hates him for it.”

Gabriel glances around again, as if to say that if so, Asher is welcome to appear and do just that, but – another of his brilliant ideas, Flynn thinks, first advising them to leave Meg alone and then not to call on Asher, and look how well that’s worked out – as established, the cavalry is not coming. It’s just them and the monster, and certain sins may very well have to be confessed. Ignoring Gabriel’s hand, because he is quite sure that he’s going to be hit with it later and he can’t stand the thought, Flynn struggles to his feet. “Get fucked, Rittenhouse,” he snaps. “I don’t care what you think you can do to us, you – ”

“Can’t I?” Rittenhouse’s tongue darts out like a snake, his black eyes gleaming with a predator’s intent. “You two _are_ Knights of Lazarus, aren’t you? That tiresome organization your do-gooder father founded, him and all his delusions of grandeur? So why didn’t you know about me? Why didn’t you help him in the fight? He should have told you, he should have _trusted_ you, but perhaps he didn’t, not so much as that. Do you even know the _year_ your cursed sire forced me into that filthy little hole under Poveglia and sealed me up, until a recent visitor was so kind as to set me free? Do you?”

Flynn hesitates. Truth be told, he doesn’t. He reminds himself that Asher carried out plenty of secret missions on his own, that this one isn’t necessarily different, but Rittenhouse _does_ have a point that on something as serious as this, Asher should have turned to his sons for help. But there’s that one little fact. _The eighteenth century._ Something terrible, to say the least, happened to the de Clermonts in that century. Happened to all of them, but particularly Garcia and Gabriel. And if Rittenhouse is about to –

“You neither?” Rittenhouse goes on, flicking that viper’s gaze to Gabriel. “But of course, you wouldn’t. You are only an even stupider version of yourself, dear boy, and you don’t know the true scale of what your beloved brother has done to you. Continues to do to you, in fact. Don’t you want to ask him what happens to your son?”

Gabriel jerks. He clearly wants to brush it off, disdainfully ignore the obvious supervillain who is, as Flynn warned, pulling out every stop to drive them apart and turn them against each other, but – thanks to Flynn’s own slip of the tongue the other night, when he was explaining Kelley’s threat to Christian – this dark suspicion has already occurred to him. Still, he manages a decent version of his usual hauteur, his elegant scoff and shrug. “As if I’d believe anything that came out of your vile mouth, you lying snake.”

“Have it your way.” Rittenhouse’s smile widens, exposing the full range of teeth. Flynn doesn’t think it is his imagination that they are once more turning long and gnarled. “Nobody wants to guess? Very well. Your father imprisoned me in the year 1796. He had to do it himself, could not call upon you for help, because of that unfortunate incident in 1762. You two had to be separated for – what was it, months? Years? – so as not to kill each other, and had not even laid eyes on each other since. I doubt you were even aware that I existed, or of all my accomplishments that your sainted father tried so hard to unravel. Were you?”

Gabriel looks, despite himself, somewhat unnerved. He clearly has guessed that something terrible happened, that their entire relationship was destroyed and that’s why this Flynn is so distant, scarred, and gun-shy with him, but that has remained firmly in the category of things they have never openly broached. For his part, Flynn feels like the part in a nightmare where things start to happen in slow motion, where you can see the cataclysm coming with no way to avoid it, and he can tell that Rittenhouse is absolutely relishing this slow, torturous stringing it out, bit by bit and drab by drab. Gabriel turns to Flynn, clearly hoping for reassurance that this is all a poisonous fiction, a fable designed to hurt, and frowns. “Garcia, darling,” he says, but the endearment isn’t as confident and casual as usual. “What is he – ?”

“He – ” Flynn reaches for Gabriel’s hand again, but Gabriel pulls it away. He can see well enough that his choices are to tell him himself or have Rittenhouse put the worst possible spin on it, and he is _damned_ if he’s letting this monster do it like that. “He’s – _moje srce,_ listen to me, you have to know that we’re going to change it, all right? Lucy and I, we’ve sworn that we’re going to do anything we can, it doesn’t matter, _anything,_ to change it. But Christian – in 1762 – Gabriel, he… he’s… he’s killed.”

Flynn has lived a very long time and seen a great many terrible things, but he is not sure that – with a vanishingly few exceptions – he has ever seen anything worse than this. Gabriel goes absolutely still, motionless as the marble saints, not even in need of drawing a breath to disturb the absence of the world, the utter, crashing void of a man standing in the temple as it thunders down around him. The horrible, nauseous silence endures, as Rittenhouse observes with vindictive glee and Flynn feels like he himself is going to die on the spot, can’t stand it, can’t, _can’t._ Then Gabriel’s head comes up very slowly, his eyes as jet-black as Rittenhouse’s. In a strangled whisper, he says, “And how does my son die?”

“Gabriel – ”

 _“HOW?”_ This time, his bellow rattles the vaults, and the eldest de Clermont son rips violently back from the second – the two who were always the apple of their parents’ eyes, Christian’s fathers, the soldiers and companions, the shared heart and life and soul, the singular organism – lost before and never mended, and now watching that destruction playing out one final time, inexorable, unalterable, shattering. _“HOW DOES HE DIE?”_

Rittenhouse, as if sensing that his work might be done and he can just nip off and collect Ashmole 782 while they’re distracted, turns to go, and Flynn isn’t sure whether to try to stop him, or if this will just end with another flying crash into the pulpit. More than that, he isn’t sure that Gabriel won’t kill him first. His brother stalks forward, then grabs Flynn and spins him around, slamming him against the wall. “This whole time, you’ve just been looking at him, at us, and knowing that? Were you ever planning to tell me, if this beast had not forced you to it? You and your witch _mean_ to save him, do you?! We all know what your promises are worth, my _love!”_

Flynn can muster absolutely no answer. He stares up at Gabriel’s snarling face, at once starkly white and utterly black, and can think of nothing to say in his own defense. He always thought it was unfair of the world to let him live, that he should have died that night as some of the smallest recompense. He cannot say that it was not technically his fault, that he did not know what Matej meant, that he never knew the vampire hunters were coming, even if it is the truth. He cannot say that Matej was Gabriel’s friend too, and that Gabriel urged him to take him to Sept-Tours with them, and stood by his side, fighting against their own homeland, for seven full years so as not to leave Garcia alone with his treason. He cannot say any of that. He has always known it was unforgivable. He is mute, damned, done for.

“Gabriel.” The word comes out at last, a despairing prayer. “Gabriel, I – you can kill me later, if you want, but that won’t solve anything. Gabriel, please. We need to stop Rittenhouse, we can’t let him get away with Ashmole 782. My love. _Please.”_

He is utterly unsure if it will work, or have any effect at all. Gabriel remains where he is, pinning Flynn to the wall, fangs bared, a complete stranger, every line of him strung with betrayal and fury and agonizing grief. Then he steps back sharply enough that Flynn tumbles to all fours, hisses at him, and without a word, flashes into the night.

Flynn is utterly shaken, wrecked and breathless, and it takes far too long to stagger to his own feet. This was it, this was exactly what he was afraid of, the reason he could not fully trust or give himself over to the seeming reunion and new rapport with Gabriel, as wonderful as it was and as sorely as he wanted to. This sword of Damocles was always hanging over them, the secret he could not tell without destroying everything they were working for, nor ever feel easy in his conscience to keep. He does not delude himself that he has done the right thing by telling Gabriel only when Rittenhouse forced his hand, but how, how, _how_ could he have broached this subject, told his brother that Christian was going to die, and expected anything to go on remotely as normal? It never did before. It might never again now. Never, never.

And yet. He could not think about how he failed Asher here in 1942, and perhaps he will learn to forget how he failed Gabriel here in 1590. Flynn pelts out of the cathedral and into the courtyard – and for a moment, he thinks they are saved, or at least that Rittenhouse was forced to flee. The square is flooding with people, servants of the emperor’s household, dressed in nightclothes and boots and half-belted jackets, the first items of clothing they had to hand at hearing the uproar. They’re carrying torches and kitchen knives and other impromptu weapons, and Flynn starts to step toward them, raising his hands, though he doesn’t know what he’ll say to convince them that nothing is wrong. _Everything_ is wrong, the cathedral is violated, the guards are scattered in the mud with their heads twisted around, and there’s a monster on the loose who will gladly drain the lot of them dry. That, or –

It’s just then that he sees their eyes, the same eerily blank look in all of them, dull and white as a hunting shark’s. There’s a strangely synchronized quality to their movements, their methodical lumber, as Flynn catches a glimpse of Gabriel across the way. He has clearly found his exit impeded by these uncanny hordes, their lips peeling back in twisted, predatory smiles. And as Flynn throws a desperate glance up, up, up the side of the cathedral, up to where Rittenhouse is standing magnificently on a flying buttress, he understands. These people aren’t people. They’re thralls. Rittenhouse has taken them all over the same way he did with Jack and then with Meg, en masse, without even having to physically bite them. Controlled their minds and turned them into his marching minions, who have nothing, no thought, except to see that Flynn and Gabriel do not leave alive.

Gabriel, coming to the same realization, draws his sword. The two of them do not move to each other’s side as they did earlier, to face the threat together: they remain where they are, islanded in the flood of thralls, as Flynn frantically tries to think what to do. These are innocent people, they can’t just kill them. For one thing, murdering the emperor’s entire household would ensure that they are personae non gratae in Prague for the rest of time, and there’s no guarantee that Rittenhouse won’t just enthrall more of them, as many as he needs, until the entire city is under his malevolent sway. Everyone in the castle district is already vulnerable to his power, and it is only growing. A cold wind is rising, howling across the rooftops, as Rittenhouse raises his hands, then makes a ripping motion. The heavy iron hands of the St Vitus clock tear off like paper and slam into the stones, inches from Flynn and Gabriel’s feet, like massive crossbow bolts. “Come now,” he calls. “Do you foolish whelps really want to play with me? Come then! Dance!”

Flynn doesn’t know what else to do. He rips out his sword and knocks aside the onrushing first thrall, trying to disarm without killing, but the thrall has more than usual human strength, and it – she, it’s a she, it looks like a middle-aged kitchen maid – scrabbles wildly with her cracked nails, trying to scratch his eyes out. Flynn dodges and darts, forced to exert every drop of his skill and ingenuity to beat them back, hacking and hewing, hammering the pommel of his sword on their heads to knock them out, but it only works for a few seconds. He is aware of Gabriel somewhere nearby, except Gabriel isn’t staying his hand, innocents or otherwise. He spins around, stabs and slashes, with deadly, athletic grace, and thralls fall to every side, more blood spilling across the sodden stones. Flynn wonders if any of them were the same who were pining over the handsome French lord at the ball, and at that, something breaks in him. He can’t be responsible for this, he can’t let this go on, Not when it’s already been enough, already taken so much. No. No. _No._

“GABRIEL!” Forgetting the thralls still clawing toward him, Flynn charges through the melee, the tangled limbs, the things he is stepping on that he can’t look down to see. War is hell, and yet for so long, he found it beautiful as well. But this is just hell, and as Rittenhouse rises into the air above them like a towering dark phoenix, Garcia Flynn de Clermont cannot bear it. He reaches Gabriel as he is about to dispatch the same kitchen maid who was attacking Flynn earlier, and grabs him by the arm. “Gabriel, my love. Gabriel, _don’t.”_

Gabriel whirls on him, eyes still pitch black, as Flynn knows that if he distracts both of them for too long, exalted reasons or otherwise, the thralls will just kill them anyway. He stabs out blindly, trying to buy them enough time, as he grips Gabriel’s head with his free hand and forces him to look at him, _look_ at him. Gabriel wrenches back, trying to get away, but Flynn hangs on with all his strength and all his tenacity and all his desperation and all his love. _“Moje srce,”_ he says, and for that single moment, no matter all the magical madness in the world, the tempest that engulfs it, it might only be the two of them. “Listen to me. Killing them – it’s not what we need to do. We need to stop Rittenhouse, he’s controlling them. They’re innocent, they’re enslaved, they – Gabriel, please. Tr – _trust me.”_

It has never tasted more acrid or hypocritical in his mouth, the fact that this is the one thing that, more than ever, he has absolutely no right to ask. But it is nonetheless the only thing that he can. Flynn thinks he might be having some effect, but he has no way of knowing if it’s enough. Everything balances on the edge of a knife. Then Gabriel pulls away, but does not resume slaughtering the thralls. Instead he lowers his head, breaks into a sprint, and rushes at the outer walls of the cathedral.

Barely an instant later, Flynn hurtles after him, as they reach the elegant gothic stonework, vault up ten feet straightaway, and climb together, side by side, with all their supernatural strength and speed and balance. They reach the roof, timber beams covered in lead, and Rittenhouse, who has descended from on high to poise magisterially on a buttress, whirls around. From the startled look in his eye, he is suddenly less sure of the odds if he doesn’t have his shambling zombie army to help out. Then he shrugs, remembers that he is all-powerful, and conjures an almighty blast of wind that booms like a cannon. There is no avoiding it, and it hits with the force of a hurricane.

Flynn is in the middle of leaping forward to catch the brunt of the blow, and it causes him to perform his second ragdoll somersault of the night. His face slams into a jagged stone spire, and his own dark crimson blood begins to trickle into his eyes, nearly gumming them shut. He is in an extremely precarious position, inches from the edge on one side and a gap in the unfinished roof on the other, gazing down, down, down to the smashed-up sanctuary below, and he claws in a vain attempt to get a better handhold. A fall from here wouldn’t necessarily kill him, but it wouldn’t be pleasant either – if he gets staked in the heart with any of the many broken pieces of wood, it _would_ kill him, and yet he does not care. “Gabriel!” he shouts. “Gabriel, to hell with me, stop him!”

Gabriel is halfway between them, somewhat closer to Rittenhouse than he is to Flynn, and the look of agonized indecision that crosses his face is clearly visible in the moonlight. He remains motionless, even as Flynn desperately wills him to go after Rittenhouse. He can see something tucked into the bastard’s coat that looks like a thick sheaf of pages – it must be, it _has_ to be Ashmole 782, and they cannot let him get away with it. He has laid waste to Prague Castle while barely breaking a sweat, and with that in hand, he would be truly unstoppable. All at once, Flynn thinks of what else happened during that fight with Gerbert of Aurillac in 1307. How he had a chance to go after Temple, Gerbert’s right-hand vampire, and finish him for good, but couldn’t risk leaving the badly wounded Gabriel to do it. As he noted earlier, this Gabriel also had that fight. He too knows what happened. And –

“No!” Flynn yells, even as his hand starts to slip, and he swings out dizzyingly over thin air, over nothing but the cold stones far below. “Gabriel, GO AFTER HIM!”

Too late. As Flynn’s fingers start to tear free, and he knows that he’s going to fall and it’s really going to hurt, two hands seize his wrists with furious, impossible strength. Gabriel lifts him bodily with barely an effort, flinging him onto safer ground on a completed section of the roof, but neither of them can stop to exchange gratitude for the rescue. Rittenhouse is getting away, he’s preparing to leap into thin air and escape with Ashmole 782, and they have helpfully given him a head start. One last chance, for this, for it, for everything.

They have never run faster or harder in their lives, sprinting along the beams and throwing themselves headlong at Rittenhouse just as he’s lifting off. They each manage to grab an ankle, and shake him violently, trying to bring him down. Rittenhouse hisses and thrashes wildly, aiming another blow at them, but they duck, and it splatters off against the stones. Even both of them together can’t quite drag him out of the sky, but there’s a rustle and a clatter as a section of the manuscript spills free from his coat. They swirl in the updrafts, then begin to tumble toward the dark courtyard below, and the swarm of surviving thralls.

Flynn and Gabriel let go of Rittenhouse in the same instant, racing down the side of the cathedral even faster than they climbed it, as they hit the ground, bull-rush through the crowd, and leap to catch the falling parchment. Rittenhouse howls in outrage and dives after them, and they are just bracing themselves to take him head-on – when all of a sudden, something charges in from nowhere and knocks the evil wizard sprawling.

For a mad, impossible moment, Flynn thinks that it is Asher. That he read between the lines of their letter and knew how much trouble they were in, decided to come anyway. But while their savior does look rather like Flynn, it’s not their father. It’s Josef the golem, who appears to have been somehow reactivated, and Flynn hopes desperately that this means that Lucy is all right, that she woke up and took control again. But Josef’s movements are much crisper, cleaner and far more human-like, and as Rittenhouse tries to rise, the golem punches him with a mighty clay fist that sends him on an undignified somersault of his own. It bats aside the thralls, bowling a path open for Flynn and Gabriel, and since they have a precious several pages of Ashmole 782 in their possession, Flynn hopes to God that that will be enough to – well, he doesn’t know what. Learn something, or stop Rittenhouse from unlocking its full potential, or anything else. But there’s no time to quibble. If they want to avoid all sorts of unpleasant fates, whether in the imperial dungeons or anywhere else, they have to go.

With Josef serving as escort duty, Flynn and Gabriel run for it. Rittenhouse lets out a shriek of rage and aims a parting blow at them, which Josef absorbs without turning a hair. There are noises in the castle that sound like real people, real and very angry people, coming this way at top speed, and even Rittenhouse cannot hang around indefinitely. There is another shriek promising that this is not over, and with a rush of dark wings, he is gone.

Flynn and Gabriel are halfway down Hradčany by the time they dare to stop running, still feeling as if they’re being chased, looking around wildly in the shadows. Josef slows to match their pace; he does look like a _he,_ not an it, and Flynn stares at him, wondering how one expresses their thanks to a clay man. He thus gets a shock when Josef’s mouth opens and says in Rabbi Loew’s voice, “You may not have much time. He could still return, and there will be men searching the city up and down. We are safe here, but come back quickly.”

“I – yes,” Flynn manages. The castle is alive with noise, torchlight, and shouts, as the non-enthralled portion of Rudolf’s court has clearly discovered the dead guards and servants in the courtyard, the ransacked cathedral, the scale of the more-than-mortal battle, and they are not in the least pleased. Flynn nods stiffly at the golem, who beckons them, and they start to move again.

It is very late by the time they finally return to the house, the stars fading and the eastern horizon turning grey. Gabriel hasn’t said a word or looked at Flynn the whole time, and Flynn himself is injured, running ragged, and very close to a collapse of his own. His legs are in danger of giving out on the front steps, and Josef holds out a clay hand and helps him up. The golem raps on the door, and in barely a moment, its master, who must have been waiting for them and seen them coming through the eye, whisks it open. “Inside,” he says, glancing tersely down the block. “Did anybody spot you?”

“I don’t know.” Words feel like an impossible effort, and Flynn leans against the wall as Rabbi Loew shuts the door. “You saved us back there. Thank you.”

“I have learned a trick or two,” the rabbi says. “Your wife is in bed. She has not yet woken. Your nephew has been with her all night.”

“Will she be all right?” Flynn feels a sense of floating, a dreamy disconnect from the world. He could desperately use a feed, but Lucy is unconscious and Gabriel clearly is not about to offer. He’s still standing just inside the threshold, staring at nothing, as if he too is no longer certain who he is or what he is doing here. Flynn turns to him, reaching out a hand, but Gabriel flinches away. Without a word, he strides up the stairs. A door opens and shuts overhead with a terribly final sound, and Flynn stares after him, bereft.

“Come sit down,” Rabbi Loew says briskly. “You look terrible.”

However terrible he looks, it is only a fraction of how terrible he feels, but Flynn follows the older (at least physically) man into the kitchen. Agnes and Jack must have gone to bed, because it is empty except for the two of them. He sits down heavily, unsure if he has to keep functioning or can just crumble apart, as Loew makes him a cup of something hot. Flynn needs a feed, not this, but he sips it anyway, to be polite, and looks up in surprise. “Coffee?”

“Ah. You will have had it, wherever you come from, though I do not think it is known in England.” Loew considers, then sits across from him. “It comes from Africa, I think, and some of the markets in Prague sell it. I find it a useful stimulation for the mind.”

Flynn sips it, almost brought to tears at the taste of something familiar, something that he hasn’t even realized that he missed. They sit there in silence as the dawn advances in grey light across the floor, the rabbi not pressing for details, though perhaps he saw some of them through the golem’s eye. But at last he says, “What happened with your brother?”

A soundless explosion of grief goes off like a bomb in Flynn’s chest. He pushes the coffee aside and puts his head in his hands, struggling to contain the howl of agony that wants to come out. “I had to tell him something about his future. Our future. Something that perhaps I should have told him before, but I had no way to do it, nothing that would not destroy us again. He can’t forgive me for it, he never did before, and he… with us… it’s lost, all of it. It’s lost.”

“Mmm.” Rabbi Loew gets up, pours himself some of the remaining coffee, and sits back down. “The Lord does seem to be peculiarly demanding with brothers, and it is not always certain what He means by it. The first brothers that ever were, Cain and Abel – we know how that story goes. The sons of Jacob did no good deed by their brother Joseph, when they coveted his coat of many colors. Yet Isaac and Ishmael each founded mighty races, though the one of them was cast out. Moses could not speak well, so Aaron became his voice, and the two of them led the Israelites from Egypt. There are other brothers of different sorts. David loved Jonathan as his own soul. It is a thing most difficult in its doing, to love a brother and trust that he will not destroy you. I will not gainsay that. I am sorry.”

“It’s my fault.” Flynn heaves an unneeded breath, in hopes it will relieve the crushing weight on his chest. “It always has been.”

“Now that,” Rabbi Loew says, gently but firmly, “I doubt very much is true. There are always two halves to everything, and two stories, and stories upon those. If you will trust me with it, what did you say to your brother that caused this?”

“The truth.” Flynn continues to stare at the tabletop. “I told him that in just under two hundred years from now, his son, my nephew – Christian – was going to die. That’s what – that’s what destroyed our relationship, when it happened the first time. It’s never recovered. And he – I don’t know what to do. I can’t take it back, I can’t unsay it. It’s just… all gone.”

He glances up, as if to surprise judgment or condemnation or anger on the rabbi’s face, but Loew merely takes that in, his expression still calm and inscrutable. Then he says, “You will find it trite, I suppose, the knowledge that the Lord tested Job, took away all his sons and his daughters, visited all manner of earthly woes on him. But at the end, He restored what had been taken, a hundred times and more.”

“But that – ” Flynn knows that Loew is trying to comfort him, but he can’t hold back his frustration. “That’s not the same! I’ve lost a daughter, all right? Fifteen hundred years ago. Her name was Iris, and she was murdered, along with her mother. I don’t know what hurts worse, the thought that I could never forget her, or that sometimes I think I have. But even when I had another daughter – which I’ve also mostly ruined, just for good measure – it didn’t _replace_ her. I love Jiya, and I loved Iris, but it’s…” He trails off. “I don’t know. I’ve never liked that story. Why would a good God even do that?”

“And see!” At that, Loew looks unexpectedly delighted. “That is why, if you were ever so inclined, you would make a very good Jew. It is not a Passover seder if we do not spend the half of it arguing why the Lord permitted our people to be enslaved in Egypt in the first place, or after forty years of wandering in the desert, He watched Moses die in sight of the Promised Land, without ever setting foot in it for all his pains. After all, you are right. What sort of god capriciously destroys a man’s life only to see if he still loves him, strips him of all he loves and cherishes, and stops his ears to his cries? Is that a Lord worthy of worship, and if so, why? Is there a greater moral to the story, or how are we to understand what He did to Job, if suffering is so wretched in our own life and heart? You are a Catholic, even if, to forgive me the turn of phrase, an unorthodox one. You think that the answer is your own guilt and unworthiness, and that you are not allowed to question the will of Yahweh. A priest would give you a pronouncement, prescribe penance. I can only tell you that I do not know, but I feel your grief, and if you would like, I will bear it with you for a time.”

Flynn takes that in. A little uncertainty is oddly welcome, especially when the terrible fixity of the future, the seeming inevitability of Christian’s death no matter what he does, is the millstone that hangs so terribly around his neck. He lets out a shaking sigh and nods, feeling dangerously close to tears, and the two of them sit there in silence, steam curling off their forgotten coffee. Loew takes the tefillin box off his arm, unrolls the small scrolls within, and reads the Torah verses aloud. Flynn can’t understand the Hebrew, but he finds it comforting nonetheless, and he closes his eyes, letting it wash over him. Then when Loew finishes, he replaces the scrolls and says, “I will go fetch your brother. A moment.”

Before Flynn can say that he doesn’t think this is a good idea, the rabbi has left the kitchen, and he shuts his mouth hard enough to hear his teeth click. He sits there in a daze, until he remembers – it was the only important thing in the world just a few hours ago, and now he almost forgot he had it – the pages of Ashmole 782 that they managed to steal from Rittenhouse. He pulls them out of his jacket, spreading them out on the table. They have paid a heavy price for this, and remembering that the parchment is made from the skin of Henry de Prestyn makes Flynn recoil from touching it too much. This is one half of his life’s work, his quest of several centuries, his relentless obsession to get this manuscript in his hands and solve all the many problems that needed fixing. He should feel something more than he does. There is relief, certainly, at the fact that they have gotten this much at least. It is beautifully written and illuminated, alchemical illustrations swirling across the page and the text reciting complicated Latin formulas for strange incantations and invocations. Flynn wonders if there is enough of any one section to accomplish something useful, or if it’s just like everything else. Scattershot, torn apart, unfinished, ultimately and completely futile.

He clenches his fists, fighting an urge to knock the papers off the table, thinking that he needs to get Lucy to look at them and then remembering that she’s still unconscious, and leans forward to put his face in his hands. He is thus in this posture of quiet and abject despair when the kitchen door opens, and he can sense even without looking up that Gabriel has entered. Along with Loew, who steps in and shuts the door again behind them. There is a hideously intense silence, until the rabbi says, “Lord de Clermont, would you care to sit?”

Flynn cracks an eye. It’s obvious from the expression on Gabriel’s face that he does not want to be here and was dragged only under sufferance, but was unable to refuse outright. But after a moment, stiffly, he does so, which is remarkable in and of itself. The only other man that Flynn has ever seen command Gabriel’s respect and obedience is Asher, and while Loew is not their father, he has that same stern gravitas and force of presence that make it difficult to disregard him. As well, he did save their lives by reactivating Josef in the nick of time, and perhaps Gabriel feels that he owes him some reciprocal courtesy at least. The silence goes on, until Gabriel says, voice rusty, “Well?”

“It is my understanding that the two of you have things to be said to each other.” Loew resumes his own seat. “I will not interrupt unless you wish me to, but I shall function otherwise as a keeper of the peace. If you wish to leave, I of course cannot stop you, but I think it wiser that these should be said beforehand.”

Flynn and Gabriel lift their heads, slow and raw, and look at each other almost against their own will. They flinch as if physically hit, and Flynn, who was bracing himself for more volcanic anger, is gutted by the look of sheer and simple desolation on Gabriel’s face. They can’t hold the gaze for more than a few seconds before they break it off, and Gabriel looks as if he is this close to overturning the table and leaping out the window, but something holds him in check. At last, barely more than a whisper, he says, “You _fucking_ bastard.”

Flynn can’t deny that, can’t justly refute anything Gabriel wants to say to him, and he tries to brace himself for how thoroughly he will be made to bleed. “Sorry” cannot come close to covering it, even when there was nothing else he could have done, when he was in an utterly impossible situation and the shared sin and grief of their past, present, and future lies permanently upon them. He looks down. “I know.”

Gabriel’s throat works as he swallows, as if trying to muster up enough verbal daggers to throw, but finding that they have already cut his own hands to shreds when he touches them. Instead, he looks at the Ashmole 782 pages. “Well, you have your precious manuscript. Some of it, at least. That must please you.”

Flynn supposes it does, in a distant, abstract way, even as it strikes him that this is the very physical evidence of their love and their destruction, the book made from the hide of the man that Gabriel killed for some purpose of his own, and will not tell Garcia why. The book that created some mysterious magical bond between de Clermont and de Prestyn, possibly the reason that he and Lucy have been tasked to put it back together and break the terrible spell. Still, he doesn’t want to talk about Ashmole 782, can’t take refuge in banalities, can’t pretend that anything else matters to him more than this. “I meant what I said, Gabriel,” he says. “About Christian. We’re going to do anything to save him.”

“Anything to save him.” Gabriel repeats the words tonelessly, with no particular belief or disbelief, as if they are a sound that has fallen on his ears without leaving the ghost of meaning behind. “You knew? You knew all this time. You came from your future with your secrets and your witch and your quest for this book, and – Christ. I know it’s different with us then. _Clearly!_ But this – you should have told me. You should have _told_ me!”

It’s on the tip of Flynn’s tongue to point out that he did tell him, albeit in very suboptimal circumstances. “You didn’t believe me,” he says hollowly, heavily. “You didn’t want to listen. You threatened Lucy and you ran away and – I was supposed to tell you, when you already didn’t trust or like me, that your son was dead? What would you have done then?”

“Something!” Gabriel slaps the table hard enough to make the cups rattle, coffee splashing. “I would have – and I _will_ do – something. I’ll see you, the witch, and your book as far as Sept-Tours, if that’s where you are going after this. I would so presume, at any rate. But after that, I’m taking Christian and I’m leaving. To where, I haven’t yet thought. To the New World, perhaps. We will stay there a few centuries. 1762, you said? I suppose we can’t risk returning until at least 1800, to be safe.”

Flynn stares at him, feeling utterly pole-axed. “The New World? Gabriel, you – you – ”

“What? I can’t?” Gabriel sounds as if he wants to snap, but the words are too laden with heartbreak to do it. “Why not? I would lay good coin that you did at some point.”

Flynn wants to answer, but his lungs and chest still feel frozen. Gabriel has him there – he did in fact run off to America for a while in the nineteenth century, the reason he was in San Francisco in 1888 and wound up with Jiya. But the rest of this – does he have no choice but to permit it? This might be a way to save Christian that does not require complicated and fiendishly dangerous timewalking plots that would create as many problems as they solved, and there’s that stupid saying about what you’re supposed to do if you love someone. As well, there’s been all this talk about how Christian is hankering for adventure and freedom, and the New World might be just the thing to give it to him. They could even kill a few conquistadors while they’re in the neighborhood, which would be beneficial for everyone, particularly the Native Americans. But to say the least, this would drastically and permanently alter the de Clermonts’ entire history, everything that Flynn and Lucy would return to in the twenty-first century, and possibly any chance of ever seeing Gabriel and Christian again, even if they did survive. If this is the bitter necessity of the situation, if this is the only way, it is truly and unfathomably bitter indeed.

“So you’d just – ” Flynn knows that he hardly has liberty to complain about people turning up or vanishing as they please, but still. “When my past self – we sent him to Dalmatia, when he returns from this nonexistent errand and finds that you and Christian are gone, he – ”

“Perhaps he should – ” Gabriel stops and presses his hands to his mouth, looking very much as if he’s trying not to cry. He closes his eyes hard for several seconds, then opens them, and goes on. “He would be perfectly at liberty to follow us. If he should have learned where we went. He could not, I suppose, be reasonably prohibited from that.”

Flynn feels as if he has been stabbed. He doesn’t in fact know what his past self would do, if suddenly confronted with that dilemma, and to say the least, traveling to the New World in the sixteenth century would radically disrupt his own life history as well. Maybe no Ashmole 782, that way. No Lucy, either, and very likely no Jiya. No Matej, even as horrendously and tragically as that ended. No Oxford. Perhaps it would recompense him, perhaps he would return and find himself forgotten to his old life, perhaps it would be better that way. “Gabriel,” he starts, not knowing what he’s going to say, completely heartsick. “Back home, you’re still – if we save you, _that_ you, I know it’s still a terrible mess. But we were starting to mend something, maybe. I want that version of you back. I love you. I never stopped, never even as bad as it got. I want to give us a chance.”

“Save me?” Gabriel lifts one ever-exquisite black eyebrow. He laughs, dry as dust. “Oh, another _saving_ me? Yes, you did mention that. Save me from what?”

Worrying about spilling the future milk seems pointless by now. “You were poisoned,” Flynn says. “With manticore venom. You’re in an enchanted sleep, we have six months to get back with the antidote, which doesn’t exist in our time, and give it to you before our deadline runs out. During our conversation on the ship, when I said that there might be a recipe for something in Ashmole 782 that we needed for you – that was it. If it’s not there, I – I don’t know where it is. But I won’t stop, I’ll look everywhere, I – ”

“Why?” Gabriel sounds exhausted. “Darling, why? Why go to all this fuss and feather for such a pointless result? I had suspicions about what sort of terrible future you came from, but this – I see absolutely no reason to want it. I don’t want to be saved, if that’s what I wake up to. My son dead, you and I all but strangers, and Papa – I’ve not wanted to say it, in case I was wrong, or worse, if I was not. He is dead then too, isn’t he? Our family in wrack and ruin? Why would I want that future? I don’t. I want no part. If that’s what you feel obligated to do, out of some ancestral loyalty to me – I release you, Garcia. I let you go. I would rather be at peace, dead for good, rather than live that way.”

Flynn opens his mouth, discovers that he has nothing to respond to that other than an utter, desperate, frantic denial, and can’t even shape it into words. He tries to tell Gabriel that watching him die before his eyes was the worst moment of his entire existence, that there was no way he could have carried on if Lucy had not contrived the bargain with the Goddess to buy them a chance, but nothing comes out except a faint strangled sound. _“Moje srce –_ ”

Gabriel does not look at him, staring at the wall. At last he says, “I love you, Garcia. I always will. In all my centuries, I never met anyone in the world who mattered to me as much as you, not except for Christian. You and him, the both of you, you were my world, my life, my joy. _You_ were my family, my north star. But all things end, do they not? They pass away. Not even vampires can truly live forever. There is nothing I will not do to save my son. This version of you and me, we have always been shadows to each other, some ghost of what long since ceased to be. On the ship, I asked if we could love each other despite that, and perhaps we can, but never in the same place, never for the same things. What we want is fundamentally always what the other, through no fault of their own, is never able to give. I thank you for what you have said to me. It must not have been easy. But this is the price we pay. This is what we must do. Or at least, what _I_ must do. What is it, a hundred and seventy-two years? Two hundred, to be safe? That is nothing. It seems that you and I have been apart for longer than that anyway. It will be no different from what you know.”

Flynn looks at him. He could not feel more torn and numb if Gabriel, ever so gently, opened up his ribs and softly, sweetly, pulled out his heart. He cannot say _don’t,_ he does not have that right, and he cannot in the least give his blessing either. “Please,” he says, in a hoarse whisper. “Wait until we get to Sept-Tours. We can send for Papa then, we could ask him, we could settle this together. Don’t leave without saying goodbye to him, don’t – ”

“What, in case I never see him again either?” Gabriel’s jaw clenches, his hands close into fists. His voice roughens. “Do you kill him too?”

“I did not kill Christian.” Flynn has struggled to believe that it was the case ever since that terrible night, doesn’t know if it is entirely true – and yet, he did not, he _didn’t,_ even though it has felt every day like he did. He wonders if he does bear some blame for Asher as well, that failure to stay in Prague in 1942 – and yet he cannot, he _cannot_ keep doing this to himself. “And I don’t kill Papa. The Nazis do.”

Gabriel looks blank, since this after all means nothing to him, but he does not answer. Meanwhile, since he might as well go for broke with this prophesying-the-future thing, Flynn turns to Rabbi Loew. “The Nazis murder countless numbers of your people as well. They come to power in Germany in the year 1933, and they start a war in 1939. In the present day, there’s a museum by the Jewish cemetery, and the walls of all the rooms are covered, two floors floor to ceiling in tiny script, with the names of the Jews of Prague and Bohemia alone who were deported to death camps and killed. It’s called the Holocaust. I don’t know how it would work, but if you could write down some kind of warning for all those who will study your work and revere you as the Maharal, maybe some of them would understand and flee in time. Maybe you _could_ just say it. You’re revered as a mystic and a student of the Kabbalah, you could claim to have seen the future. It wouldn’t stop it, but maybe it would help.”

Rabbi Loew looks stunned, as well he might, but he too cannot think of an immediate response. “The Jews are no stranger to persecution and tribulation,” he says at last, slowly. “As might be seen from my interest in Josef as a potential defender of our people in this city. But this sounds much different. Much worse.”

Flynn nods. He is no advertisement for the future, nothing that either of them should possibly want – Gabriel for himself, and Rabbi Loew for all his descendants, the generations to come that he, a mortal man, will not live to see. Flynn is not sure that he can ever recall feeling more heartbroken and hollowed out, having fought to the bitter end and then some, washing up as a husk on some far distant shore, somehow expected to stand up, and try again once more. “It is,” he says. “I’m sorry that the future is so – that I’ve – that it’s just like this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Gabriel looks at him as if he wants to say something else, but he doesn’t. He presses his lips together, closing his eyes, as the moment remains silent and fragile and translucent as crystal. Then he gets to his feet. “It has been a long day, and night, and day again,” he says politely, as if that is all, that is everything. “I think I will retire.”

With that, he gets up and exits the kitchen, opening the door and shutting it again, as Flynn wonders if he can just quietly wink out of existence, a blown-out candle flame, and spare himself having to face any of this. But no matter what else, he has not been a coward, and he still has something left to do. He gathers the pages of Ashmole 782 together, tucks them under his arm, and like Adam and Eve thrown out after the sin which could not be forgiven, when their eyes were opened and they knew good and evil, he too leaves Eden.

He goes upstairs, makes his way down the hall, and opens the door into the bedroom. He sets the pages down on the sideboard, strips off his dirty boots and tunic and trousers, and in his underclothes, exhausted, at his wit’s end and then some, he crawls in next to Lucy.

She has been put to bed mostly in her clothes, though it looks as if Agnes and Christian tried to make her comfortable. She is still unconscious, and Flynn has to look in a moment of panic to be sure that she is in fact breathing. He settles next to her on the pillow, gazing at her face, etched with crushing weariness and work and everything that she has been doing this entire time, but since they came to Prague especially. She is lying here like this because she has never stopped fighting, has given her heart and her blood and her magic and her soul, and Flynn does not honestly know if he can pick himself up for his own sake. It seems too echoing and empty and excruciatingly unbearable for that. But he has to try, for her. He has to be here, for her. He doesn’t know if she is all there is left. But she would be enough.

He reaches out, tracing a tumbled curl of dark hair out of her face. He curves his fingers around the fine line of her jaw and cheek, thumbs her chin, looks at the faint blue veins that thread beneath the porcelain-fragile pane of her skin. _White queen._ He has never been in any difficulty believing it, has admired her strength and her courage and her power even when she could not see it herself, and the more it shines forth, the more he is in awe of it. But that entails a role for him as well, and one that he has ducked from and dodged away and shied and denied and restricted and held back at every point. For good reasons, yes. For not wanting to hurt her, certainly. But if there is anything to it, if there is anything left that means anything to anyone, and if there is any chance to set anything right, he cannot be afraid.

Flynn lowers his mouth to Lucy’s face, kissing her eyes, her nose and then her lips. He wonders if it will wake her like a princess in a fairy tale, awaiting true love’s kiss from Prince Charming, but while magical beyond a doubt, this is not a fairy tale, and he knows wryly that he is never likely to be mistaken for Prince Charming. He lifts his hand and touches her neck, cups her shoulder, runs it down her arm. He isn’t sure how she does this with her white glow, other than being a witch and otherwise amazing, but red is the color of passion, the color of heart and heat, the color of what has always been his greatest strength, even among his countless flaws: his _love,_ his unending devotion, the one thing that lights the stars, that nothing can and ever has taken away from him. If he is the red king, he is not a creature of wrath and terror and ruin and bloodshed, what he was once long ago, and has so badly feared to return to ever since. If he is the red king, his is the lamp that guides the world. His is the greatest heart to hold, and his heart is always hers.

Flynn kisses her again, as he thinks there might be a few sparks between his fingers, but not enough. He’s still holding back, even if he does not want to, because it is, after all, not easy to unbox and lay bare what has been bound up and held back for so long. He closes his eyes, breathes a few times to remember how, and takes hold of her with the other hand, until at last, a warm red glow engulfs his hands and bursts from him in waves. It illuminates the room and the sheets of the bed and the coolness of her face, and her eyes move beneath their closed lids. It falls on her, flushes her skin dewy pink, and he fancies that he can see it moving in her veins, knitting her, helping her, healing her. Until at last, her eyes flutter, and open a crack, and she looks up at him. In a dreaming whisper, she breathes, “Garcia?”

“It’s me.” He leans down and kisses her again, and Lucy sighs into his mouth, raising her arms to wrap around his neck, pulling him half on top of her. They kiss until they are good and ready to stop, and he shifts his head, resting on her shoulder, as she strokes his hair. He lies there in her sanctuary, content to die here, if that be so. _Let your mercy spill on our burning hearts in hell._ It has long been his private prayer, when it comes to her. At last he says, half muffled into her chest, “I’m not afraid anymore.”

Lucy makes a small sound in her throat as if to ask, but doesn’t, and Flynn is left to reflect that it’s true. The worst thing that can happen has happened, the one thing that he has been dreading all along – and, no matter how shattered and shaken and heartsore he feels, he is still here, and so is she, and so even are Gabriel and Christian, for the time being. He does not know how to mend this, or if it can be. He does not know anything. But he is _not,_ he is _not_ afraid, and the sheer relief of that, the calm and ease, the downpour of rain after an endlessly gathering thunderstorm, is unbelievable. “I love you, Lucy,” he says. “I want you to be my wife for real. When we – well, I have a lot to tell you, later. But we’re going to Sept-Tours, and when – when we get there, if you agree, I want to marry you. Properly.”

Lucy goes still, clearly surprised, and Flynn fights the old impulse to bite his tongue and walk it back. He waits, not pushing for an answer, and discovers that either way she does, he will be content, he will live with that. But if she –

“Yes,” Lucy says, after only a few moments, breathless, laughing. She sounds half as if she’s wondering why he would ever need to ask. “Yes, Garcia. _Yes._ ”

Flynn feels his shadowed world turn brighter at that, feels a key unlock in his chest, as the two of them grab for each other and kiss passionately. She can obviously sense his hunger in other ways, and pulls his head down to her neck, making small encouraging noises. He flexes his fangs out and sinks them in as gently as he can, listening carefully to make sure she’s still enjoying it; some old habits will never be broken, and it’s for the best that they aren’t. But he closes his eyes in abject relief as the warmth and sweetness of her blood surges into him, strengthening him, until at last he can finally see who they are in unison, and not each in isolation, and have always meant to be. The king and queen, red and white, gold and silver, earth and heaven, _together_. The wedding, the conjunction, the culmination.

As ever, he doesn’t take more than he needs, doesn’t want to leave her giddy or faint or too-drained, but for once, he does take what he needs, and feels properly sated when he pulls back, licking the small wounds closed. Lucy sighs in euphoria, lifting herself toward him in offer of other sorts of union, but Flynn thinks she could use more sleep first. He kisses her lightly. “Soon, _moja ljubav,_ ” he says. “All you want.”

Lucy smiles, her hand curling around his arm, and they settle themselves more comfortably, too exhausted to celebrate their engagement much more. That, too, will come later. They have to be one, they have to be enough to face this, Flynn thinks. However they do, they have to save Gabriel and Christian. Gabriel absolved him of the burden, told him that he did not want to be saved, did not want to wake from the manticore venom if it was to this, but even if it is not like that, it has to be something. He made a promise, and he meant it. Always.

As if reading his mind, Lucy shifts closer, kissing the underside of his jaw. “What do we do now?” she asks drowsily. “What comes next, Garcia?”

“I don’t know.” Flynn settles her in his arms, and looks up at the ceiling. All the weight of time and space, of love and grief and death, hangs about them, soft and sad, tender and terrible, and all he can do is live. “Everything.”


	17. The Crossing

Lucy wakes very late the next morning. It takes her a long moment to remember why she feels so much better, since the last thing her conscious memory really recalls is falling into darkness as her mind was ripped out of the golem and she knew everything might be lost. But she is healed and glowing with health, quietly and radiantly content, and that does not match up – at least until she recalls the other interlude of this morning, so soft-edged and sweetly hazy that it seems like a dream itself. She remembers Flynn asking, and her answering, and the sweet, pleasurable sting of his feed, and the warmth of his red-glowing hands. Did that _really_ happen? Garcia Flynn? Should she check out the window for flying pigs?

Lucy feels a wave of deep and delighted happiness spread through her, a weight lifted off her shoulders for the first time in weeks. In some sense, it’s not that much of a change. They’ve been living as husband and wife for months, and in the eyes of the rest of the world, they already are. But this is different, this is real. Flynn said that he wasn’t afraid anymore, and Lucy has wanted that for a long time. She doesn’t know if they’ll have time for an actual wedding, and part of her would like Denise, Michelle, Mark, and Olivia to be there, even if they are likely to still have deeply mixed feelings about her marrying not just a vampire, but a _de Clermont_ vampire. But it all settles a small, strong spark of joy in her that she sorely needs, and she remains where she is, savoring it. Then she opens her eyes. “Garcia?”

“Mmm?” He’s sitting at the desk, hunched over something, and looks as if he hasn’t slept much, or at least got up again before very long. Then he looks up, blinks, and seems surprised to see that she’s still there. “Ah. You’re awake.”

“Yes, obviously,” Lucy says dryly. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and pads over to him, as he tips his face up and she kisses her fiancé good morning. “What are you – I'm very behind on everything. What happened after I passed out? Did you – is Rittenhouse – ? Did something – ?” Presumably Flynn would not be sitting here absorbed in study if the supernatural world was in danger of crashing down around their ears, but that is obviously the first order of business. “What all did you have to tell me?”

“Ah,” Flynn says again. He turns around in the chair, and she steps between his knees, resting her hands on his shoulders. He seems haggard, haunted-looking, rather than happy, and Lucy fights that old, anxious bad-brain voice whispering that he is already regretting having impulsively popped the question. “Well. One thing at a time. After you collapsed, Gab – Gabriel and I ran to the castle. Rittenhouse was there, and it was… well, it was a fiasco. Long story short, we managed to retrieve part of Ashmole 782 and drive him off, but it took a heavy toll. He enthralled half of Rudolf’s servants, we only got away because Loew managed to reactivate the golem in time, and…”

He trails off, as Lucy’s frown deepens. She was not expecting unqualified jubilation, since they still have a whole cornucopia of crises, but she knows him well enough to see that something is considerably wrong. “Are you hurt?” She should have noticed that earlier, but he seemed well enough – better than well – and feeding from her would have helped with any minor-to-moderate injuries. “And what did you – you _got_ part of Ashmole 782?!”

“Yes. Here.” Flynn indicates the pages spread out atop the desk, as Lucy feels a faint shock of recognition. She has definitely examined some of them four hundred-odd years in the future, in the Bodleian reading room, and the spidery handwriting, the elegant illuminations, the braided border and the strange figures doodled in the margins, are all glancingly and maddeningly familiar. “Do you know any of it? Can we do anything with it? Make an antidote for Gabriel, or find a way to destroy Rittenhouse, or – ?”

“Hold on, I’d need to look at it properly.” Lucy almost can’t believe that this is it, that it’s here, after all they have gone through, all their plots and plans and attempted coups to get their hands on it. Some of it, at least, which is a rather important proviso. “Rittenhouse still has the rest? Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He flew off. Somewhere in the city, or looking for better prey, or…” Again, Flynn trails off. Then, as if angry with himself, he shakes his head again. “Lucy, there’s something you should know. At the castle… Rittenhouse, I don’t know where he learned it, but it doesn’t matter. He knew what happened to Christian, and he threatened to tell Gabriel unless I did. So… Gabriel… Gabriel knows. We had it out then, and then again later, after we got home. When we get to Sept-Tours, he wants to leave. He’s planning to take Christian to the New World for two hundred years, to avoid him dying in 1762. I tried to get him to wait, to talk it over with Papa, but he… I’m not sure. If he goes, it will change everything. I don’t know what my past self would do, if he came back and found Gabriel and Christian just gone without any explanation. I’m – I’m sorry.”

“What?” An ugly jolt goes through Lucy, dispelling some of her dreamy post-engagement glow. “Gabriel _knows?_ About Christian? Everything?”

“Yes.” Flynn leans back in the chair. “He said we shouldn’t save him in the future, if this was what he would wake up to – Christian dead, Papa dead, the two of us strangers. I didn’t – I mean, he’s not my Gabriel, he hasn’t lived with it for a quarter of a millennium, it’s different. I’m not going to listen to him, I’m going to keep working on it anyway, but if it _is_ what he really wants… should I? Is that his choice to make, after I’ve taken others from him?”

Lucy blows out a breath, rubbing the bridge of her nose and trying to fight down her frustration, however ignoble, that she barely got this small moment of happiness before the world had to horn right back in with its problems. “I don’t think Gabriel really wants to die,” she says. “Even if I can imagine it was a horrible shock, and I’m sorry for both of you. But if he – if he _does_ go to the New World, if Christian does live…”

It’s clear that while neither of them want this, the possibility that it might actually work, that it would do the one thing they have been racking their brains to think of how to accomplish, has to be taken seriously. Lucy wouldn’t stand in the way of Gabriel making that choice, if he really did want to, and she doesn’t think that Flynn would either. But the fact remains that it _would_ change everything, and there’s no way to know what they would return to in the twenty-first century. Lucy doesn’t _think_ that she and Flynn would forget each other; they’re outside the sphere of influence, they’re together, they would be insulated from the effects of the altered timeline. But the Gabriel they’re trying to save wouldn’t be there, at least nothing like they left him, and who knows what could happen to the de Clermont family, or with Temple, Cahill, Keynes, and the other multitude of power grabs happening among the splintered Congregation. They want to respect Gabriel’s anger, they’ve hurt him enough by the simple and terrible fact of future knowledge, and don’t want to swoop in like the thought police to force him to forsake his present course, but in turn, does he have the right to make that choice for _everyone?_

“Shit,” Lucy says. At that, she has to wonder if Flynn’s proposal, sweet and genuine as it very much was, was nonetheless a frantic attempt to hold onto something that he could have, to keep at least one person he loved from slipping away into the ether. She loves him so much, and she knows that he loves her, and she said yes and she meant it. She _wants_ to be his wife, properly, and she has no reason to think that he doesn’t want the same. But it hurts her in some poignant way, and she can’t articulate exactly how. She pauses, kisses his cheek quickly, and then steps away. “I think I’ll get some breakfast.”

Leaving Flynn to puzzle over the Ashmole fragments, Lucy pulls on her shift and skirt and bodice, laces herself up – she doesn’t have a lady’s maid anymore, complicated outfits are out – and goes downstairs. The house is sunlit and quiet, and Lucy steps into the kitchen, whereupon she finds Christian wolfing down a plowman’s lunch. Technically, of course, he is only nourished by blood, but like any young man, he is not about to refuse any opportunity to eat whatever is at hand. At her entrance, he jumps up, looking surprised. “Aunt Lucy!”

“Hi.” Lucy manages a smile. “How – how are you doing?”

“Well, I think,” Christian says, blinking. “Papa and Uncle Garcia came back very early this morning, the rabbi said, and then Papa – well, he is still in his room, I have not yet seen him today. But by the sound of things, it was a most eventful night. I should be asking after you.”

“I’m fine.” Lucy goes to the sideboard and looks for some food, as Christian holds out his own plate, looking abashed. She fixes herself a few things and sits down, looking at his bright, eager, unknowing face and feeling absolutely sore. Is _she_ going to have to explain this to him, that his parents just split up for good and one of them is taking him off to America, a place he’s never been, far away from his family, in some desperate attempt to save his life? Christian is innocent, she loves him like crazy, and he’s been more than happy to adopt her as his aunt/mother/cool older sister, but God, she does not want to do this. “Christian, are – are you sure you haven’t talked to your father? Or the rabbi?”

“Yes?” Christian cocks his head, confused. “Why, what is it?”

“I…” Lucy thinks that someone should tell him, since the boys clearly haven’t. Not that she can blame them, but still. “Last night, your father and your uncle, well – there was a – a disagreement. I can’t tell you any more, I wasn’t there. I just thought you should know that something went on, and they may need to talk to you later.”

“Talk to me?” Christian echoes, looking blank. “About what? If it is about that horrible Rittenhouse creature, I can help, I can fight. I was happy to stay with you last night, Aunt Lucy, but if they need me to do – ”

“No, it’s not that.” Lucy shakes her head, suddenly close to tears. It seems impossible that she woke up less than an hour ago feeling so happy. “I just… with you. I don’t know what’s going to happen. You know that all three of us – your father and your uncle and me – we all want the best for you, don’t you? I know we’ve had a lot of differences, it’s been hard and we’ve not always gotten along, but we want that, all right? So much.”

“Aunt Lucy, are you well?” Christian inspects her with deep concern. If she actually starts crying, she has a feeling that he would immediately dash out on a quest for the Holy Grail, which makes her snort despite herself. He gets up, moves around the table, and offers her a handkerchief. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy says, wiping her eyes and trying to pull herself together. “The past few days, it’s been an emotional rollercoaster. I just – I’m sorry.”

Christian looks perplexed, as he of course does not know what a rollercoaster is, but pats her arm in a comforting fashion nonetheless. She is still summoning up the wherewithal to try again when there’s another sound at the door, they glance around, and behold Gabriel de Clermont. He is pale and tousled, far from his usual poised and sleek and perfectly put-together self, black hair sticking up wildly and dark shadows etched under his eyes. At the sight of them, he stalls on the threshold, looking set to turn and run. “I’ll come back later.”

“Papa.” Christian gets up, concerned, and tows his father into the kitchen. “Papa, are you – ”

The only thing Lucy can think of that is more awkward than telling Christian herself is to sit here while Gabriel tells him, and she doubts that he wants witnesses anyway. She starts to scoff her lunch as fast as she can, as she can feel Gabriel looking sidelong at her, clearly trying to guess how much she knows. Rather than leave him in suspense, Lucy meets his eyes as levelly as she can. “Garcia told me.”

Gabriel flinches. Christian looks even more confused, and worried. “Papa, let me get you something,” he says. “Or if you need a feed, I’m sure Uncle Garcia – ”

“No.” Gabriel says it sharply enough to make them jump, and he modulates his tone with a considerable effort. “No, my love. I am afraid I will not be feeding on your uncle, now or for the foreseeable future. In fact, it might be wisest if you and I left here sooner rather than later, and traveled back to Sept-Tours. We have much to prepare. Before the summer is over, we will be leaving on a crossing to the New World, the Spanish Indies.”

Christian looks as if these words make sense individually, but he cannot fathom what they are doing stuck together. His frown deepens. “Papa, are you feeling all right? You don’t look – what went on last night?”

“Nothing,” Gabriel says, in the most transparent lie that Lucy has ever seen from any creature, supernatural or otherwise. “Just a – few realizations, let us call it that. Some things I had thought before, but never dreamed to be so unfortunate as to have confirmed. Suffice it to say, circumstances have changed for us all, but we should always embrace new opportunities. You want adventure, don’t you? Excitement, exploration? We will have it all. It is a new world, as they say. We could go anywhere you wanted.”

Christian is still looking blindsided, as would any child whose father walked in one morning looking like hell and announced they were imminently moving abroad for unspecified purposes. It sounds like he’s in trouble with the Mafia, which clearly occurs to Christian as well. “Rittenhouse – is it because of that beast? Papa, I said I could – ”

“NO!” Gabriel barks, even more loudly, provoking another jump. “No, Christian, it is not because of Rittenhouse, and I will not be questioned on this. I am your father, I know what is best for you, even as it seems that others do not, or have long forgot the way of it. This is what you have wanted, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Christian says slowly, question marks clearly popping into the air above his head. He has the look that any kid has when their parents yell, wishing they wouldn’t, scrambling to figure out what they might have done wrong. “But the New World, Papa? Just like that? I don’t – I’ve never been there. And Grandfather, Grand-mère, Uncle William, Cecilia, all the others – won’t they wonder what we’re – ”

“I will explain it to them,” Gabriel says, in a tone of great finality. “They too will understand it is for the best, once they know what I do.”

“And what about Uncle Garcia?” Christian presses. “Aunt Lucy? It’s been all about helping them, about finding this manuscript, and now we’re just _leaving?”_

“They have found it.” Gabriel’s temper is clearly burning very close to the fuse, and Lucy doesn’t want to be here if it goes off. She already feels mortified enough as it is, but it would be more awkward to get up and run for the door. Some notion of trying to support Christian keeps her in her seat, but she doesn’t know if that’s worth a damn either. “Half of it, at least, and I said that I would see them as far as Sept-Tours. But after that, we are going. I _will_ not stand for debate on this.”

Christian shoots an imploring look at Lucy, as if begging her to talk his father around to sense, but Lucy suspects that she is the last person that Gabriel wants to hear from in any capacity. She has rarely felt more useless in her life, stuck to her chair like a bump on a log, watching this farce and tragedy play out while being helpless to stop it. Christian flails for a moment longer, then sets his jaw and folds his arms. “I’m not going, Papa. Not unless you explain what on _earth_ is going on.”

“I’m trying to – ” Gabriel drags a hand over his magnificent, wracked, haunted face. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you. Indeed, perhaps we should leave at once, especially if Rudolf’s men are looking for us. Find that Jack of yours, we can – ”

 _“What is_ _wrong with you?”_ Christian, at that, doesn’t sound like a child in the least. His voice is a deep growl, and he springs angrily to his feet, knocking his chair sprawling. “Why won’t you tell me? Why do you never tell me anything? I’m a grown man, Papa, I’m not a baby. You can’t just march in here, announce we’re running off to the New World without so much as a by-your-leave, expect me to agree that seems perfectly sensible, and be happy to ask no further questions! I’m going to stay with Uncle Garcia and Aunt Lucy until this is done, then we can talk about it, and maybe you shall have decided to – ”

“No, you’re not!” Gabriel flashes to his feet as well, slamming his fist down on the table. “You are not staying with them! You’re going with me, as my son, and that is _final!_ Get your things! Fetch Jack. We are going to Sept-Tours! NOW!”

“What, so _now_ you decide to be responsible?” Christian looks utterly incredulous. “You, for whom it is not a morning unless you’re staggering home from bedding some other man’s wife, fighting a duel in a back alley, or being fished from some gutter rank with wine and misadventure? You know I love you, Papa, but you’ve never been _responsible._ I spend half my time living in fear that all this fun will catch up with you – I worry about you too, you know! Oftentimes I feel half the father and you the son, but have I tried to stop _you_ from living your life? I haven’t! I trust in Uncle Garcia to keep you alive, mostly. Now you want to run away and have that all fall on me? I think you’re the one being selfish!”

Gabriel looks like he’s been punched. He is too self-aware to deny that this is his habitual mode of life, and even as much it’s true that he is a loving, caring, and supportive father, he is very much an irresponsible one, at least in this sense. Christian has tolerantly turned a blind eye to his shenanigans, because he knows that there’s _usually_ no likelihood of Gabriel coming to real harm, but he does very much have a point that Gabriel trying to pull rank as the responsible one, the one knowing best, simply is not who they are or have ever been. Presumably there are presently fewer opportunities for unbridled debauchery in the New World than there are in London, but Gabriel doubtless would manage to locate them. Either way, he is left off guard, outwitted, until he takes refuge in anger. “You have no right to speak to me that way, even so,” he snarls. “I would never dare to say such things to my own father, so unless you wish me to – ”

Christian is on the cusp of another hot retort, but it’s clear that he simply can’t think of any way to go on with this argument, not when Gabriel has never been like this in his seven hundred-odd years of life to date. It is clear in Christian’s face that he’s wondering if Rittenhouse managed to body-swap with Gabriel last night or something else equally sinister, as the only way to explain this brusque, bizarre, and imperious ultimatum. He was so relieved and happy when Gabriel and Garcia finally stopped fighting the first time, has never known them to be anything but in the utmost amity and concord, and he looks as if the entire world has spilled out from beneath him. In a whisper, he says, “Papa, you’re scaring me.”

At that, Gabriel finally has the grace to look ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he says, his voice hoarse and heavy. “I am. But I’ll have to explain later. Go pack, Christian. Please.”

There is a very long and very unpleasant pause. It’s not clear whether Christian is going to consider himself bound by parental dictates or not, but Gabriel de Clermont is very imposing to openly defy, and at last he backs down, silent and shaken. With one final look over his shoulder, he scurries out of the kitchen, and the door swings shut behind him. Lucy is already on her feet, feeling that she has been here more than long enough, but Gabriel says, “Lucy.”

She freezes, trying to calculate the odds that he’s going to attack her. She doesn’t think so, and she doubts he would have done the courtesy of addressing her by name beforehand, but it’s clear that he is in a bad place and anything goes. “Yes?”

“I am sorry.” It sounds as if Gabriel had to wrestle it out between his teeth, but to say the least, it was the last thing Lucy was expecting, and it makes her blink. “That was a disgraceful scene, and it was not fair that you should have to see it. Once more, and for the last time, I owe you an apology. I am sorry for how unchivalrous I have been and how little I have understood. You may be assured that I do now, and you will no longer have to concern yourself with me. I do hope that you and Garcia have a wonderful life together, and I most sincerely mean that. I wish it was different, but I think it for the best it was not.”

Lucy looks at him. Half of her wants to sympathize, to comfort him after learning something that could not be otherwise than terribly traumatic – she _knows_ why he’s reacting this way, she does, and she can’t say she’d do any better in his position. The rest of her wants to smack him around the head until his eyeballs spin. “So you really think this is a good idea. Running off to the New World for a few centuries, in hopes that it will – ”

“It will.” Gabriel speaks just as calmly, with no room for doubt or uncertainty. “Christian is angry with me, he has every right to be, but he will understand. I have no other choice, nor will I justify myself to anyone about _my_ right to make decisions for my own son. And so – ”

“Christian is Garcia’s son too.” Lucy sits down across from Gabriel and looks him in the eye. “You know he is. And it’s not fair what you’re doing to them, or any of us. I understand why you’re upset, I do, I swear. But if you go to the New World now, it’s going to change everything, for you and Garcia and your whole family and everyone you love, and if nothing else, I need you to say that you understand that. It might not even work. Even for vampires, America is uncharted territory. You could still end up losing Christian, and then what?”

“At least I will not have lost him in some terrible future that Garcia could not bestir himself to tell me about.” Gabriel’s jaw works, his fingers tapping relentlessly on his arm as if to stop himself from breaking dishes. “I understand, of course, that you are inclined to take his side. I will not blame you for that. I am glad you two have each other. But – ”

“Just wait,” Lucy says. “Please, just wait at Sept-Tours, before you go. I can’t stop you from leaving Prague, you can return to France and prepare to do this if it is really what you think you want. But talk to your family about it, your father. _Please.”_

“My father who will also be dead in this future of yours?” Gabriel sounds more exhausted than angry. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why you are so bent on preserving it. I suppose that is another mystery on which I must remain unenlightened. So, my lady – ”

“Why did you kill Henry de Prestyn?”

Caught in the act of getting up to go, Gabriel pauses. “I beg your pardon?”

“I asked you before. On the journey here, when you told me that you did it. Now we have some of Ashmole 782, and you’re determined to run away to America, and if this is the last chance we’re ever going to have, then – ” Lucy gets up as well, moving to block the door. “Was anything you told me about his death even true? _Why did you kill him?”_

Gabriel hesitates. At last he says, “Some of it was true, yes. Kit was with me when it happened, and it took place in the vicinity of Smithfield. As for the rest, it does not matter.”

“It matters.” Lucy folds her arms. “Why did you do it?”

She can see Gabriel deciding what the odds are that she’s going to give this up, and if so, whether he can escape short of physically picking her up and throwing her out of the way. She is a small witch and he is a large vampire, it’s not as if it would be difficult, but still. At last, as if to say that there is indeed no more concern to be had with English law, nothing they can do to him if he is sailing the ocean blue far away from here, Gabriel shrugs. “He was unwell, as I said. Distressed, agitated. But it was not only him. There were others with him, some sort of mob, that he had brought along. Most of them were witches, though a few vampires, and even a daemon or two. A motley rabble of creatures, and all of them insistent that they must find Garcia de Clermont at once, and kill him.”

Lucy feels briefly vindicated that she was right, that her theory about why Gabriel would do this was accurate. She thought he would only resort to it in order to protect Flynn or Christian, and she’s not surprised. “So what happened, and why did you lie?”

“Kit and I asked them who they were, and why they had such a quarrel with Lord Clairmont. We did not say, of course, that he was my brother.” Gabriel shrugs. “Henry said that it did not matter who they were, and that they knew Lord Clairmont was a villain, it was paramount that they find him. I thought he was raving, some common lunatic. Our family being who we are, we attract some riffraff of deranged challengers from time to time. I told him that it was best to go home and sleep off whatever he had had to drink, clearly too much of it. Henry would not hear of it, so he attacked me. I had to defend myself.”

“Really?” Lucy says evenly. “If that’s the whole story, why didn’t you tell Garcia? Why didn’t you tell me? Killing some random mob leader isn’t exactly an unspeakable crime.”

“It was not only him.” Gabriel leans against the wall with feigned casualness, folding his arms to match her. “Remember, I said there were others. A creature multitude of no small power, and not inclined to peaceably receive the insult I had done their leader. I gave them a chance to amend his mistake and to leave us be. They did not, so… I killed them.”

 _“All_ of them?” Lucy doesn’t know why she would have to confirm this, but still. “How many? How many creatures?”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel says. “I did not do for them all, Kit took care of several on his own accord. But the most part, yes. I killed them.”

Lucy has to take a moment to consider that, even as she’s starting to understand why Gabriel lied. Killing Henry de Prestyn alone in self-defense is one thing, but being responsible for a mass slaughter is a lot more dicey. “Who were these creatures? What did they want?”

“To kill Garcia, presumably, though I am afraid that I did not sit down to properly ask.” Gabriel’s voice is tight. “They were attacking us. It was as fierce a war as any I have ever been in. We could not leave any alive. Neither Kit nor I needed to tell the other that we could never breathe a word of what had gone on, not to anybody. You will recall that officially, Queen Elizabeth’s policy on creatures is that we do not exist, we do not reveal our true natures, we do not disrupt the peace, we are allowed to live so long as we never declare ourselves. To discover that a vampire and a daemon had killed a mob of strange invaders, who in turn had wished to murder one of her most valued spies and wreak untold magical sabotage – how do you imagine that would have gone, my lady? It would have revealed the entire creature world and brought it down in a stroke. Father Hubbard knew something was happening in Smithfield that night, and we barely kept it from him. One of his blood children stumbled across us as we were burying the bodies, would have borne word back to the hive, and I…” Gabriel trails off, then finishes flatly, “So I killed him too.”

Lucy feels bile rise in the back of her throat, though not necessarily on behalf of Hubbard. “So,” she says. “That is why you and Hubbard hate each other.”

“One reason among many. Hubbard does not know for certain that it was me, only that one of his hive died, and had reason to suspect I was involved. That must have been why he disinterred the grave in search of clues, inadvertently realized that Henry’s body was special, and sold it to Dee for as high a price as he could get.” Gabriel looks away. “As I said. Kit and I knew we could never say anything, not to anyone. I never asked him to claim that it was him who killed Henry personally, but he did. Sweet Kit is… loyal, despite all appearances. He thought it was better that suspicion, if there was to be any, fall on him. He is a spy for Elizabeth’s government, after all. He could claim it as defense of the realm without any other nasty supernatural questions asked.”

Silence hangs almost palpably. Lucy wonders who Henry brought with him – other timewalkers? The creatures who consulted on the making of Ashmole 782, as Walter Raleigh reported strange visitors coming and going at Dr. Dee’s house? Anyone who could thus likewise be incited to think that Flynn was a threat to them? It hardly matters now, since they are all dead, but still. “So,” Lucy says quietly. She knows why, but she wants to make Gabriel say it. “You did that. You killed all of them.”

“Killed them, committed high treason, conspired unlawfully to cover it up, endangered relations between of all London’s creatures, gave a notorious enemy a legitimate reason to hate us, risked the complete exposure and destruction of the supernatural world, caused the queen’s own servant to deceive her, and lied to everyone who asked, all because I would not take any chance in risking Garcia’s life, yes.” Gabriel drags his hand across his face, as if to wipe away phantom splashes of blood. “Have I accounted myself to your satisfaction?”

Lucy doesn’t answer that. She just looks at him, deciding that she owes Marlowe an apology if she ever sees him again.For all his drama and misdirection and deliberate thwarting and constant untrustworthiness, he's kept this secret for both the de Clermont brothers, and shielded them, whether or not they deserved it, from a lot of trouble and woe. “So Kit helped protect Garcia and then protected you,” she says, “and you were protecting Garcia. Whatever else could be said, that was the core of it.”

“Yes.” Gabriel says it almost simply. “Until yesterday, I would have done anything on earth, heaven, or hell for him. I thought it was the same for him, but I was wrong. Or at least, has become no longer true. By the by, my lady, as I told him, I will tell you. You are released from any obligation or expectation of saving me, and no longer need to worry of it. But now I have trespassed on your mercy and forbearance sufficiently, and I too need to pack my things. We will be gone from the house today. Goodbye, Lucy.”

With that, he makes a move as if to lift her hand to his lips and kiss it, but something makes him think better of it. He nods to her instead, and she nods back. Then he strides out of the kitchen, much bumping and thumping ensues, and twenty minutes later, Gabriel, Christian, Jack, and Edward the valet are gathering in the front hall with their trunks and traveling clothes. Jack looks confused and plaintive at this sudden irruption to his life; he wants to go with Christian, of course, but he also just lost Meg, his usual caregiver, and Gabriel is clearly scaring him. At the sight of Lucy, he runs to her and grabs her around the waist. “Lady Clairmont,” he says into her midriff. “I don’t – where are we bound? France? I cannot go to France. All men know that the Frenchmen eat frogs.”

“It’s okay, honey,” Lucy says. “We passed through France on the way here, remember? Sept-Tours is nice, I’ve been there. You’ll like it.”

Christian gives her a funny look, clearly trying to think when she would ever have been there. He is obliquely aware that she is not from around now, it was mentioned in one of their conversations back in London, but it’s not been spelled out, which is part of the tragedy. All three of them – Flynn, Gabriel, and Lucy – are trying to save him, but they’ve never told him the reason for it, and Lucy calculates the likelihood that she can just pull him off and blurt out the truth, horrible as it would be. But if Gabriel is going to these lengths after learning it himself, he would probably actually kill her if she told Christian. Just as she is trying to think what to do, a door opens overhead, the stairs creak, and Flynn and Agnes come down them.

At the sight of his brother, Gabriel goes very still. It’s clear that he was counting on making his escape before Flynn put in an appearance, and might have also hoped that Flynn would hide in his room until it was over. But with that defeated, he whirls on his heel with his best aristocratic hauteur. “Very well, Garcia. See us off, if you – ”

“You said you would see us as far as Sept-Tours.” Flynn reaches the bottom of the stairs, as Agnes looks confused, then massively indignant that somebody is sneaking her adopted grandson off without her making sure he has enough cookies for the road. “Or are you – ”

“We will meet you there,” Gabriel says, more tersely than ever. “Your wife insisted that we wait until Papa arrives, so I shall do so – entirely for his sake, not yours. But I think it is best for all concerned that we go at once, rather than waiting. I do not wish to remain here in this way, and I doubt you do either. Christian, say farewell to your uncle if you wish, then come.”

Having thus ensured himself of a dramatic exit, Gabriel pulls up his hood (which is unnecessary, it being summer, but it is the principle of the thing), clicks his fingers autocratically at Edward, and pushes the front door open, sweeping out. Flynn starts after him, but Christian catches his arm. “Uncle Garcia,” he says in a whisper. “I think Papa’s lost his mind. I don’t know why, but it’s – it’s bad. Maybe it’s best that we go to Sept-Tours for now, but I’ll delay him, I’ll make sure we wait until you and Grandfather arrive. Maybe Grand-mère can shake some sense into him in the meantime. Trust me with this. Please.”

Flynn looks at Christian with an agonized expression. It obviously goes against the grain of his nature to just let Gabriel walk out with such a massive wrong unmended between them, the lingering threat that he will bugger off to America and screw over everything, but the look on Christian’s own face stops him. Christian is clearly desperate for reassurance that at least one of his parents is still sane, that one of them will trust him to make decisions about his own fate and see him as a man. It clearly takes a great deal out of Flynn to promise it, but at last, he nods. “All right,” he says. “We’ll leave here as soon as we can and follow you. It will take a few more days. We have to do right by Meg, and there may be other matters to settle, but we’ll hasten to Sept-Tours. We’ll make it right, you hear me?”

“Yes.” Christian glances at the door, as if to ensure that Gabriel isn’t coming back to overhear this secret agreement between them. “I love you, Uncle Garcia. Come fast.”

“I love you too.” Flynn cups Christian’s head in his hands, looking at him for a long moment, then kisses him quickly. “I’m sorry about this. You never deserved any of it. Just – stop your godforsaken fucking idiot father from jumping on a boat, we’ll be there soon.”

“Aye.” Christian nods, squeezes his uncle’s forearms, then pulls back and turns to Lucy. “I’m sorry about earlier, Aunt Lucy. I don’t know why any of it happened.”

“It’s all right.” Lucy hangs back, not certain if she’s allowed, but Christian seems to be waiting for it, so she steps forward and hugs him tightly. “Wait for us.”

Christian nods again, and with a peculiarly heart-rending effort, Lucy lets him go. She steps back, reaching for Flynn’s hand, and he holds on as Christian and Jack leave the house, Edward returning to fetch the trunks and Agnes scurrying out with a large loaf of bread and several jars of preserves. Christian and Agnes embrace in the street outside, as Flynn makes a small sound and rubs his knuckles across his mouth. “I hope we’ve done the right thing.”

“I know.” Lucy looks at him tenderly. “But you have to trust Christian.”

“I know.” Flynn lets out a pained sigh, watching as the traveling party climbs into the carriage and the doors shut. All at once, he says, “Are you angry at me?”

“What?” Lucy is startled. “Angry at _you?_ It was a terrible situation, this wasn’t your fault. You’ve done the best you could.”

“I haven’t, though.” Flynn looks old, exhausted and heartsick and very sad, unable either to watch or to look away as the carriage starts to roll down the cobbled street, wheels clacking. “All along, I could have done better with Gabriel. I could have found some way to tell him, or warn him, or told Papa, or… what’s been the point of any of this, coming back here, seeing them alive, if we couldn’t make it _true?_ It would have been terrible to hear it any way it happened, but then we could have thought of ways to save Christian together, rather than just leaving it like this. I _was_ a coward. I told myself I wasn’t, but I was. This is never the way I wanted any of it to happen, and I’m sorry.”

“All of it?” Lucy tries not to read into more than what he’s saying, but that insecurity is an hard habit to break. She hesitates. “Look, this morning, when you came to bed – I’m so glad that you’re not afraid, that you’re willing to fully embrace being the red king. But maybe you asked me to marry you because you thought I would run away too if you didn’t, or you wanted something real, or you wanted me to replace what you’d lost with Gabriel, or – ”

Flynn looks up with a start, as if it has managed not to occur to him that his timing on this whole matter _might_ have left something to be desired. It is altogether likely that it hasn’t. Lucy loves this man so very much, but he is still an idiot who can be toweringly competent in all other walks of life and utterly useless at emotions. Since he of course must also inevitably draw the wrong conclusion, he looks alarmed. “Do you – not want – ?”

“Of course I want to marry you,” Lucy says, laughing a little while simultaneously exasperated. She grabs hold of his rumpled doublet and gives him a shake, which doesn’t do much (he, obviously, is also a large vampire). “I just wanted to let you know that you didn’t – you don’t need to ask me only to make sure I won’t run off too, okay? I had my chance to do that a while ago, and I know this has been so hard for both of us, in different ways. Maybe I seized onto the idea of marrying you too, just as a way to feel more certain when I’m so scared all the time about losing everything. We can still be engaged, I don’t want to go back on that. But you said that you wanted to marry me as soon we got to Sept-Tours, and maybe we should wait on that. Just… see what happens first, and solve some other things, and be sure that it’s the right time. Does that sound good?”

It takes some nerve for Lucy to suggest this, since part of her also wants to snatch up the offer and make sure it can’t be revoked, but she knows that’s not the right way to do this, and she would be highly uncomfortable expecting the de Clermont family to throw them a wedding and celebrate with this lingering shadow and estrangement hanging over them. She doesn’t think Flynn really wants that either, just that he wasn’t thinking, made a well-intentioned, impulsive offer, wanted what he wanted, wanted her. He inspects her face, as if to be sure that this is acceptable to both of them, then nods, looking rueful. “If you’re sure, _moja ljubav._ I would – I would still do it then, if you wanted, if you said so. Just so you know.”

“I know.” Lucy reaches up to caress his cheek, as the two of them sway on the spot, looking into each other’s eyes. She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him, and he holds onto her for a long moment, his big hands spread on the small of her back. Then she sighs, pulls away, and whispers, “Let’s go look at Ashmole 782.”

That, therefore, is what they spend the afternoon doing, and well into the evening. It’s not a wise idea to leave the house anyway, since Rudolf’s soldiers are marching down every street, knocking on doors, and demanding answers from anyone who might know anything about the attack on the castle last night. Rabbi Loew left after his conversation with Flynn and Gabriel, in order to get some sleep at his own house, but the turmoil in the city means that he can’t risk returning. Lucy shoots hopeful looks at Josef the golem, as if to see if he will reactivate and speak words of wisdom, but the clay man remains still and lifeless. He has done enough for now, and it is up to her to solve this.

She takes a painstaking census of the extant pages, longing for her laptop and her careful notes. Lucy strains her memory to recall the library catalogue entry from the Bodleian, and thinks that it listed roughly 200 folios. Usually folios are folded to make four pages, front and back, but since Ashmole 782 is lavishly full-sized, each page is approximately one folio. Once Lucy has counted through everything twice, just to make sure, she puts the number in their possession at 68. So… about a third. Not bad, but less than she was hoping for. This means that Rittenhouse still has two-thirds of it, nobody knows where he went, and she represses a sudden fear that he’ll attack Gabriel and Christian on the road. That, however, doesn’t seem like him. He’s evil, but he’s ruthlessly pragmatic. He’ll attack where the best advantage lies, and that would be here, to get the whole thing back. On his own, Flynn can defend the house from almost anything, but Rittenhouse is an entirely different threat.

There’s no use worrying about that right now, and Lucy returns to her inventory. The pages look, obviously, much newer than when she worked with them in the Bodleian, creamy and smooth, and she’s admiring the texture until she remembers that it’s Henry de Prestyn’s skin (at least part of it, since most of this was written on regular parchment and even an adult man does not have enough skin to make into 200 pages). Then she thinks again of what Gabriel told her this morning, trying to connect it to her last conversation with Amelie Wallis. She is increasingly sure that Henry gathered his gang of creature friends, decided to take no risks in confronting a vampire as powerful as Garcia de Clermont, as a result of Michael Temple’s direct attempt to destroy them. Amelie said that whatever her father learned, what made him so upset and caused him to leave, was from Michel of Antioch, aka Temple. So Temple – possibly the original-timeline Temple, who would still have plenty of incentive, but also possibly a Temple who timewalked with Rittenhouse’s help – lied to Henry that Garcia de Clermont wanted to kill him in the past, and this would have dire consequences. Henry set off at once to stop it, and, just for that bit of neat and brutal irony, got killed by _Gabriel_ de Clermont instead. Etc etc., body acquired by Hubbard, sold to Dee, _voila,_ Ashmole 782.

The worst thing is, Temple isn’t _entirely_ wrong. Lucy and Flynn didn’t kill Henry directly, but they’re still the reason he ended up dead, since he was used as a pawn in the war across time, Temple’s spectacular and centuries-long revenge, all the magical forces that are jockeying for the power of this book. Maybe Lucy is the one who can access Ashmole 782 because she’s Henry’s direct descendant? They originally thought her power came from Amelie, and maybe it does. But since this manuscript contains the physical remains of her great-odd grandfather, there is blood as well as magic linking Lucy to it. Still, Amelie and her husband Jebediah had six children, and the Prestons are a well-known witch family. If it was just a matter of simple genetic ancestry, there have to be others today who are descended from them, not least Jessica. Henry’s mother, Anneke Proktor, was the witch that Jessica rescued in Innsbruck in 1485, her own several-times-great grandmother. From what she said, Jessica tried to get Ashmole 782 too, and couldn’t. For some reason, it’s still only Lucy.

“Does it make sense?” Flynn asks, as he brings her a fresh inkwell and changes her candles. It’s getting dark, they can hear the shouts of Rudolf’s soldiers a few streets away, and it must be making both of them nervous. “Can we do anything with it?”

“I’m not sure.” Lucy rubs her eyes; she can feel a tension headache setting in, and hopes it doesn’t decide to turn into a migraine. She hasn’t gotten them regularly since grad school, but this would be a bad time to restart. “It’s just a random assortment of pages. There are a few things that might be promising, but I need more time.”

Flynn glances edgily out the window at the sound of a distant crash. “If they come this way, I’ll forestall them, but it might be a good idea to get Josef out of the way. I’m sure there are plenty of men in the city who look like me, but not many powerful clay golems.”

“Yes, that seems like a good plan.” Lucy has, of course, been cognizant of the risk of attracting retributions on the Jews, if Josef is caught with the Hebrew-lettered _shem._ That would be a very poor way to repay Rabbi Loew for everything he has done for them, and she does not need further convincing. “Go take care of that, I’ll keep going on this.”

Flynn nods, kisses the top of her head, and leaves the room, as Lucy works a cramp out of her hand, takes a distracted sip from her goblet, and tries to think of an angle of attack that she has not previously considered. She has pressed her hand against the parchment hard enough to leave smudges, but the omega either doesn’t work or hasn’t yet been activated. It hasn’t been magically deposited and concealed in the Bodleian, and frankly, Lucy is currently not sure how it’s going to get there. They have a third, Rittenhouse has the other two-thirds, and it needs to be reunited at some point before they leave 1590. Then again, just because it happened in one future is no guarantee that it will happen in this one, now that they started meddling. Gabriel’s plans to sail for the New World make that abundantly clear. Open up the past to change, and you can’t predict what it’ll do. Not unless you could just –

At that, suddenly, Lucy thinks of something. She shoves the chair back, jumps up, and runs over to the strongbox in which they keep their most important, irreplaceable items. She unlocks it and rustles around, then pulls out the Ashmole pages, the ones they brought here from the future and which have been steadily vanishing ever since. These were the ones that were hidden in Denise and Michelle’s house, the ones with the alchemical wedding of her and Flynn, everything she has never understood about the mystery of the manuscript and her mother’s intentions alike. If Carol Preston ever gave her daughter anything useful, this has to be it. _You who are the key._ That was what the first set of pages said, back at Sept-Tours when Lucy was there with Flynn the first time. She had to unlock it.

Lucy carries the pages over to the desk and sorts through the chaos. She did jot down a description of their previous state in her journal; she’s not using it quite as much for an Agony Aunt now that Flynn is talking to her again, but it strikes her that Rittenhouse knows a good chunk of what she’s written in it to date. Since Meg was reading the journal in Essex on his behalf, he has at least some knowledge of what these missing pages look like and what they might do. But that’s not any more distressing than him having the physical thing in the first place, and Lucy needs to focus. She searches through the torn, mud-stained mess of the present folios, checking them against the descriptions in the journal, until she finds a place where her pages might fit in. She slots them into place, carefully aligns the edges, and wonders if she should get out a needle and thread to do a rudimentary binding. Antiquarian book repair is not really her area of specialty, but she’s willing to be flexible.

At first, nothing happens, and she listens tensely for the sound of smashing windows from downstairs (whether Rudolf’s soldiers are breaking them or getting thrown through them by Flynn would be another question). But then, a sudden glow flares up from the place where the old and new pages have been joined together. The parchment glows red, and Lucy can sense the enchantments colliding, knitting, brought together across time, as more writing begins to appear beneath the surface text. Lucy noted that the book was a palimpsest, that it contained multitudes within itself, and while the readily visible part is decently powerful on its own, the really good stuff lies even deeper, carefully concealed. The manuscript is rearranging itself as she watches, letters scampering here and there on small inky legs, until in a few moments more, it’s an entirely different book than the one she was just looking at.

Lucy blinks despite herself. She’s used to magic by now, of course, and is fairly confident in wielding it, but it still takes her by surprise at times. The pages are glowing as if fresh from the heat of a forge, and she waits to touch them, just in case they might burn. Then once it has died down, she pulls it toward her and starts to search.

The newly revealed spells are still incomplete, but they’re more potent than anything Lucy has ever seen. She can feel faint echoes of their effects when she touches the parchment, and it makes her realize that this should be only done when necessary. She uses the tips of two fingers to leaf through the pages, starting to get a headache from the competing clashes of magic sparking in front of her eyes, the ghosts of powerful incantations in ancient languages ringing in her ears. If she was ever in any doubt about why the entire creature world was willing to kill each other and trash their fragile peace accords to get their hands on this thing, she isn’t any longer. As Flynn has been studying, creature abilities have been decreasing for centuries, they can’t do half of what was common in this day and age, but just on its own, Ashmole 782 contains enough power to completely refill the tank. There is a section on the magic of King Solomon and the djinni that he called up to build temples and cities and master the power of air and wind and fire, to divine the movements of the stars and to mine endless gold from the earth. You could physically reshape all of _reality_ with this thing. It’s beautiful and fascinating and singular, but it’s like holding an active nuclear bomb. Just by virtue of being this close, you’re probably already dead.

At that, Lucy realizes that this book definitely has more than one author, and it isn’t John Dee, clever as he might be, who is responsible for these parts. He must have written the surface text, and then his various collaborators filled in the rest. Are those the creatures who went with Henry de Prestyn, and were subsequently killed by Gabriel and Kit? Temple lying to them that Garcia de Clermont was going to use all that magic to become supreme dark lord of the universe? This is obviously incorrect, not least since Temple himself is vying hard with Rittenhouse for the dubious honor of that title, but it could explain why they took a risk accompanying Henry on his suicide mission to 1589. Maybe Dee played them off against each other, assured them that he was only consorting with other vampires, or other witches, or other daemons, and they would never have told such secrets if they thought other creatures could get their hands on them. Or maybe it was Kelley who suggested that little stratagem. He’s definitely amoral and clever and power-hungry enough to come up with it. Once the other creatures realized they had been cheated, they also realized it was too late. They had to band together and try to stop this perfect weapon, or they were all done for. Maybe Kelley knows that all this extra power is in the book, but hasn’t been able to unlock it, and that has been the focus of his alchemical experiments in Prague. Hasn’t had the correct spells, or the right pages, or whatever. But now it’s leveled up, thanks to Lucy herself. Anyone can get it.

A deep chill goes down Lucy’s back at the realization that this plot would have another useful dimension for Temple. If he could get rid, at a single and masterful stroke, of everyone else who knew anything about the true strength of Ashmole 782, there’s no way he wouldn’t do that. He might even have been counting on them running into Gabriel and Kit that night. Especially if it had already happened. Especially if he knew exactly where and when to send them. Lucy thought All Souls 1589 might be a mistaken date for All Souls 1590, but it’s not. Temple is behind all this, present-day Temple, and he knew exactly what he was doing. He is using their search for Ashmole 782 against them, taking advantage of the paradoxes and the circular loops of causation that it creates in time, worming into the corners and the unfinished pieces. The closer they’ve gotten to it, the more damage they have done to themselves. Until of all the secrets and protective structures and other networks that used to surround it, there will just be them, Lucy and Flynn and Gabriel. Then Temple can kill them, in whatever exciting fashion presents itself, and take Ashmole 782 for himself, with nothing and no one else standing in the way. Jesus. He’s gotten _them_ to do half his work for him.

Lucy leans back in her chair, feeling ill. What’s worse is that she doesn’t know how to stop this, since they obviously can’t drop everything and go back to 2018. That way, Rittenhouse can just swoop in and helpfully collect the missing part of the manuscript, mission accomplished. She doubts that he would in fact hand it over to Temple after that, so the rival dark lords could have a war to see who was evil top dog, which is clearly an even worse outcome. But it’s some twisted version of “whatever you do can and will be used against you.” Anything they do trying to stop it might make it happen instead, _and_ now they’ve just let Gabriel and Christian go off to Sept-Tours. Sending for Asher. Flynn and Lucy are planning to join them. The whole family will be there. So –

“Garcia?” Lucy gets to her feet. She needs to talk to him, needs to see if any of this logically holds together or is just increasingly paranoid speculation. It’s no stretch to consider Temple more than capable of it, and it’s the kind of genius, diabolical plot with eight hundred moving pieces that he would be smart enough to put together. “Garcia!”

There are a few muffled thumps from downstairs, the sound of voices from the hallway, and the stairs creak with someone coming up. Just in case it isn’t him, she raises her hands, conjuring witchfire in preparation to defend herself, but when the door opens, it’s a ruffled-looking Flynn, with a long scrape along one cheek that is quickly healing. At the sight of her, he says, “Easy, Lucy. Just me.”

“Couldn’t be too careful.” Lucy extinguishes her hands and eyes his battered face in a pointed fashion. “Was that from hiding Josef, or getting the soldiers to go away?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Flynn says. “Though I’ll have you know, I was very polite to them. Agreed that it sounded like a terrible mess at the castle, I wished them all success in finding those who had done it, and suggested they put things in order elsewhere. Apparently Edward Kelley is furious about his manuscript being stolen, and has offered a very substantial reward for any information on it. I suggest we leave Prague sooner rather than later.”

“Yes, but I’m sure he thinks it was us anyway.” Lucy doubts there are many other possible suspects, anyway, and Kelley can’t be allowed to have it back. “Garcia, look at this.”

She urges him over to examine the transformed Ashmole pages, and Flynn’s jaw drops as he stares at it. Even without touching it, he too can feel the power surging off it, and he aims a worried glance at her. “Can you turn it off again? This is going to attract God knows what.”

“I’ll try, but there’s more. Temple – I’ll explain it all later, but he’s been using our own search against us. I’m almost sure of it. He’s been manipulating us the whole time, he definitely tricked Gabriel and Kit into killing the creatures who contributed to this, and indirectly caused it to be made in the first place. Now…” Lucy stops. She can’t properly articulate her sensation of dread, only that they need to avoid having the entire de Clermont family in one place at all costs. “Rittenhouse is his man on the spot, at least for now, but this is his idea. His revenge. We need to stop Gabriel and Christian from reaching Sept-Tours. It’s important.”

Flynn frowns at her, not entirely following her train of thought, but he can see she’s disturbed. “Temple? Obviously, he’s terrible, but he’s back in the present. He can’t reach us here. I think Rittenhouse is our bigger problem, don’t you?”

“Rittenhouse and Temple are working together.” Lucy bends over the manuscript and tries to find some way to turn off the light show. “Rittenhouse could have been traveling back to the present every week or so to give him an update. Especially as he’s gotten stronger and stronger, that wouldn’t have been an issue. And besides, Temple has the simple strategic advantage of being four hundred-odd years ahead of us. Everything we’ve done here, even if we haven’t done it _yet,_ he could find out about it. We’re just history, like anything else you could research or look up in a textbook. He doesn’t need to _guess_ what we do. He _knows.”_

Flynn opens his mouth again, looks uneasy, and shuts it. “So if he got all of us together at Sept-Tours,” he says slowly. “He must have told Rittenhouse about what happened to Christian, or at least made sure he knew it. And we just – Jesus, Gabriel and Christian – ”

“Yes.” Lucy finally pulls out the alchemical wedding page, and the Ashmole pages go dim, rearranging themselves into their more ordinary configurations. Then she looks down at it, and gets another shock. Most of the missing illumination has reappeared: the white queen, the red king, _Lucia_ and _Garcia_ beneath their feet. But instead of looking like them, the two figures are blackened, scorched, as if a cigarette has been used to neatly burn their faces out. “We need to stop them from getting there. I don’t know what we would do next, but I think that’s what Temple’s counting on. If they’ve already written to Asher – I don’t think so, but – ”

“I wrote to him while you were still asleep.” Flynn looks pale. “I sent it off with one of the Knights of Lazarus. I had to warn him about Rittenhouse getting Ashmole 782, but I told him to meet us at Sept-Tours, to talk Gabriel out of this stupid plan.”

“Okay, well.” That is a bit of a nasty shock, but Lucy refuses to panic. “We need to get out of here and try to catch up to Gabriel and Christian. Do we have time to take the rest of the household along? If it’s another three weeks on the road, we’re screwed.”

Flynn considers that. “No,” he says. “No, we don’t. We’ll have to leave them here and send for them later. Maybe it will look less suspicious anyway, so we don’t totally disappear from the city overnight, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll run on foot and carry you.”

In other circumstances, Lucy might have enjoyed the chance for an adventure with just the two of them, but this is an intervention, and they won’t have time to relax and shoot the breeze (or for that matter, anything else). She rolls up the Ashmole pages, stuffing them into a bag along with her journal and a few other necessities and things they can’t leave behind, as Flynn changes into traveling clothes. Lucy does the same, and since it will be easier to ride piggyback on Flynn and do whatever else is necessary when not encumbered by long skirts, she selects breeches, shirt, doublet, and cloak from Christian’s left-over clothes. They’re still too big for her, but at least not as engulfing as anything of Flynn’s, and once she’s done a lot of belting and knotting and other adjustments, they’ll have to do. When Flynn gets a good look at her, he snorts. “You look like Viola from _Twelfth Night.”_

“Thanks,” Lucy says, raising both eyebrows at him. “Does that make you Duke Orsino?”

Flynn shrugs, but does not dispute the association. Both of them pull on their cloaks and hoods, sling their bags over their shoulders, and rattle downstairs, as Flynn straps on his sword and assumes a certain dashing resemblance to Vampire Robin Hood. They are just on their way out the door when Agnes says behind them, “And where are the pair of ye off to like brigands? With nae so much as a by-your-leave?”

“Ah.” Flynn, as if belatedly realizing that perhaps they should say something to someone before they do a bunk in the middle of the night, turns around and bows politely. “Mistress Sampson. We have found ourselves with a sudden and unavoidable need to depart immediately. We were hoping that you might stay here with the household and the servants until we could send for you to return to London.”

Agnes squints at him. It’s clear that she has her deep suspicions about what could have caused Gabriel and Christian to run off so intemperately this morning, for which she has not entirely forgiven Flynn, but she sighs. “Verra well. Though if you’ve gotten that sweet lad o’ yours into trouble, I’ll box your ears ringin’, ye great fumble-brained lummox.”

“We’re very much hoping we haven’t,” Flynn mutters under his breath. Aloud, he says, “Well, we thank you for it. We’ll send word when it’s safe.”

With that, he dashes out the door, as Lucy lingers long enough to hug Agnes and promise that they will explain this later. Then she hurries after Flynn, who is already power-walking down the dark streets and may have to mesmer the sentries to let them out of the city. It strikes Lucy that they’ll be very exposed out alone in the countryside, even moving at vampire speed, and she throws an uneasy look at the sky, as if in preparation for flying David Rittenhouses to suddenly blot out the moon. It’s still the dog days of summer, early August, but the night is surprisingly cool. That’s fine. It’s going to be a long run, as far and as fast as they can go, and since she’s the only one who will need to stop for food or rest, she’s determined to hang in there as long as possible.

They reach the gates in a few more minutes, as Flynn foregoes the chump option of asking for permission and just wrenches the iron bar out as easily as plywood, pushing the heavy portcullis open and beckoning Lucy out after him, then shutting it as quietly as possible. They are careful to stay out of the moonlight as they hurry down the cart track that runs parallel to the Vltava, which gleams like polished silver. Once they have put enough distance between them and the city that they can be reasonably sure of having escaped without detection, Flynn stops and beckons to Lucy, who stands on her tiptoes and puts her arms around his neck. He boosts her up onto his back and hooks his forearms beneath her knees, settling her in place. “Hang on,” he says. “It’ll be fast.”

“I’m ready.” Lucy leans around to kiss his cheek. “Just get us there.”

Flynn nods, takes a deep breath, and braces himself like a racehorse in the gate, awaiting the crack of the starting pistol. She can feel his strength and speed coiling beneath her, and then all at once, unlike anything she’s ever experienced, it bursts free.

The night turns into a blur, the wind whipping her face so hard that it makes her eyes water, as it feels like driving a convertible at two hundred miles an hour with the top down. Flynn has a firm grasp on her, but Lucy still claws to get a better grip around his neck, briefly afraid of strangling him before remembering, of course, that he does not need to breathe. Still, it can’t be pleasant to be choked when sprinting at high speed, and she presses her face against his back, in an attempt to minimize her wind resistance. She can’t decide if riding a vampire is exciting or terrifying, or both. But either way, it doesn’t matter. They have to do this.

She can’t really look back, but she can sense Prague disappearing behind her. She holds on harder, twists her head half an inch, can still make out the towers and steeples and hear the distant chime of the clock. Then they run down into a low-lying glen, a river of mist, and when they emerge on the far side, in the slippery grass, the empty night, it is entirely gone.


	18. Mother of Mercy

It is possibly a good thing that Wyatt de Clermont is still completely deprived of the power of speech – indeed, all he can hear is a muffled buzzing inside his head, and he doubts he’d make any more sense if he tried to say something – and thus does not waste time trying to _talk_ anyone out of the course of action they have just unwisely decided on. As Jack, looking extremely dubious but apparently unwilling to disobey Madame, swipes to unlock his phone and search for a number, Wyatt lunges at him, fast as a snake, and knocks it out of his hand. It hits the floor with an expensive-sounding clatter, but to judge from the sunglasses and designer wardrobe, Jack can afford to replace it. Wyatt doesn’t care, anyway. They are not, they are _not,_ calling Michael Goddamn Temple like this. Not until he gets a few more goddamn _answers._

“William?” His mother, who until now has clearly also been in a state of shock, turns to stare at him. “William, what are you – ”

“Yeah. No. Sorry.” Words have suddenly returned to him, and they fling themselves as sharp and savage as knives. Wyatt heaves a breath he doesn’t need, clenches a fist, barely restrains himself from putting it through the picture mirror, and tries to talk himself down. “Sorry, _Maman._ It was very brave of you and all. But we’re not calling that bastard until we learn more about the part where he has my daughter.” His tongue barely fits around it. Nothing makes sense, and yet everything does. And if they sent Jessica into the past trying to protect her, all unknowing, they have left this ­– _his_ – kid sitting there for Temple to snatch up. Wyatt is still short-circuiting. He has never particularly envisioned himself as a father, doesn’t have any blood children like his brothers have or had, and doesn’t know that he would be any good at it, but something has shattered inside him. “Or was that just more acceptable collateral damage? Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised!”

“Uncle Wyatt.” Jiya gets up, looking distressed, and moves toward him, but Wyatt pulls back from her too. Of all of them, his niece would be the most inclined to sympathy, but he doesn’t want sympathy right now. “Look – if Temple has Cecilia and Sarah, we can find them both, we can get to them and – ”

“By doing what? Calling him up, announcing where we are, giving him time to do God knows what to prepare for us? The kid’s what, six?” Wyatt spins on Jack, who looks alarmed. “Temple doesn’t need her for anything strategic. He’ll kill her just to be a jackass. Or otherwise make sure we can never find her. But I don’t know why I’m surprised. I even get it, you know. I get why Jess would never tell us or me or any of us. Why would she want to be part of this? Part of _us?”_

He spits the last word with a venom that takes even him aback, for the frustration and the heartbreak and the things he has shut up and taken on the chin for the good of the de Clermont family, or in the name of respecting the stupid fucking Covenant. He was a Congregation member and he couldn’t be openly seen to transgress it, but he would have been willing to, he would have wanted to, if he and Jess had ever been given a fair chance. “Why would Jessica have ever told us?” Wyatt goes on, gaining steam like a train rolling downhill. “Why bring her half-witch daughter to our attention? She already took a hell of a chance with her own life, dating the son of Maria de Clermont, the witch-killer!”

His mother flinches as if he’s slapped her. “William,” she starts. “William, I – ”

 _“My name is Wyatt!”_ His shout shakes the elegant crystal droplets of the hallway chandelier. “I’ve told you, I’ve told everyone. I bet if Gabriel or Garcia changed their name, you’d be able to remember it! But it’s always been a different standard for them than for me! You weren’t that pleased about the witch Garcia suddenly brought home and fell in love with, but you came around, you gave her Papa’s ring! I didn’t dare to bring Jess to fucking _France,_ much less Sept-Tours, and you and Gabriel made _very_ clear that I wasn’t going to see her again or else! I had to arrange to send her to the past, because you were determined to murder whoever harmed a hair of precious Gabriel’s head! The two of them, they can never do anything wrong in your eyes. Not like me. The constant fuck-up. Their shit might not stink, but it sure as hell all sticks to me!”

Maria goes white. She works her tongue around a reply, but can’t muster it up, which is enough unlike his ferocious mother that Wyatt feels briefly bad, as if he shouldn’t keep shooting at her if she isn’t going to fight back. Jiya, Rufus, and Jack all look very much as if they would like to be invisible, but too late, they’re just going to have to suck it up. Wyatt feels like a bull snorting and pacing in the ring, waiting for the matador to make a move, red flag burning in his eyes. He debates biting his tongue again, but he’s done that for too long. “Now here we are,” he goes on vengefully. “We’re stuck with me as the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus, the third-string option, the backup _backup_ quarterback, only when we didn’t have any other choice. It literally took _this_ before any of you wanted to trust me or take me seriously, and now that we’ve discovered I have an actual _kid,_ she just doesn’t matter as long as we think about what’s good for the family, the _vampire_ family. Temple’s an evil son of a bitch and I want to rip his guts out through his throat, but he’s not the reason we’re a mess. We’ve destroyed ourselves, all of us, just because it’s the only thing we remember how to do. Even if Temple was nowhere in the goddamn picture, Jess wouldn’t want anything to do with us, and you know what? _I don’t fucking blame her!”_

It feels so good to get this off his chest, even if he really wants to also shout at his brothers and neither of them are here, that Wyatt might go on indefinitely, but at that, something stops him. He couldn’t be more surprised if the world suddenly turned upside down, and that’s about what it feels like. He goggles at his mother. “What – _Maman,_ are you _crying?”_

Maria doesn’t answer, pressing her hand to her mouth, as Jiya likewise looks as if the sun has suddenly fallen from the sky and been quenched in the sea. Maria de Clermont, to say the least, does not cry, especially over such trivial things as her children shouting at her, but there is no doubt that is indeed what she is presently doing. She coughs, knuckles her hand across her eyes, and sits down in one of the striped moiré armchairs, trying to compose herself. Wyatt has thought of a few more things he would like to say, but yelling them in your weeping mother’s face seems a little too intentionally cruel, and half the reason he did this in the first place was because he figured she would yell back, and they could finally have a proper argument. He wasn’t prepared for this, doesn’t know what to do with it, and turns away, falling silent, shamefaced. Jesus. Even his anger is pathetic and causes them pain.

Nobody says anything for a very, very long moment. Then they hear a slow, clumsy clunk on the stairs, look around, and behold Anton Sokolov, still looking like shit, helpfully carrying down the plates from his breakfasts so as not to trouble them for it. “Please excuse,” he says. “I do not mean to interrupt. But I am hearing shouting. Is everything okay?”

“You – you shouldn’t be up, man.” Wyatt takes the plates from him, putting a hand on the Russian’s shoulder and trying to steer him back in the direction of bed, but Anton doesn’t budge. “It’s – it’s just a little family squabble, that’s all. You know.”

“Ah, yes. Sometimes I must pummel Gennady, when he is stupid. It is understandable.” Anton nods stoutly, even as a shadow passes over his face at the mention of his still-missing brother. “But I hear name of Temple. He is scumbag who imprisoned me in that terrible place, you know. If is pummeling of _him_ to be done, I am not staying behind.”

“You’re still mostly dead,” Rufus says. “Plus, the whole pummeling plan just got a major monkey wrench thrown into it, which was part of the yelling. So you have time to go back to sleep. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to sit here and watch it, it’s awkward.”

Anton glances around, eyes lighting on Jack, who he regards suspiciously. “Who is pretty-boy vampire? Did not see him earlier. Never trust pretty boys. Often evil.”

“Long story. We think he’s a friend, though. Sort of.” Jiya gets up as well, joining the coterie trying to shift Anton back in the direction of the stairs. “Really, you aren’t well. I promise, we’ll keep you updated on any actual Temple-pummeling plans. Okay?”

With these and other such utterances, they finally manage to get Anton back to bed, which at least has left a lull in the argument. Jiya and Rufus are yawning their faces off, and Wyatt, supposing dully that it is his job as semi-responsible uncle, orders them to go to bed too. Jack likewise makes a tactful exit upstairs, since he can clearly see that he has thrown their lives into enough chaos and should leave them in peace for now. That leaves Wyatt and his mother, alone in this beautiful, echoing, empty Venetian villa, too close to their enemies for comfort and not far enough from other ones. Now that they have some modicum of privacy, Wyatt could pick up where he left off, but he still doesn’t know what to do. He knows that Maria would never cry just to make him feel guilty and stop the argument, so the only explanation is that he actually touched a nerve. Maybe they should talk about that. But since when do they _talk,_ Wyatt thinks wearily? Half the reason Temple was able to concoct this plot and put it into motion without interruption is because none of the de Clermonts trusted each other enough to share information. They used to be unstoppable. Now they’re this.

“William,” Maria starts. She stops and catches herself. _“Wyatt_. I haven’t – I always called you that because it was your name when I – when you became my son. And the other two – your brothers, they never made space for you in the way that I hoped, and perhaps that was my fault. I did not ask before I made you, even as much as I did not ask before I made Garcia. And each time, that cost us dearly. Garcia’s violence and revenge and darkness, and your exclusion, less bloody, but no less painful. I never liked to call you Wyatt because I thought it was the name you chose when you ran away from us, a name to replace what we had failed in doing. What _I_ had failed in doing. Perhaps it was, and I should have accepted that, rather than denied it. I – I am sorry.”

Wyatt glances sidelong at her. To say the least, he is not used to his mother speaking frankly about these things, and he is caught on the hop. He wants to tell her that she has been barely reachable for three quarters of a century, that he knows why she went mad after losing Papa, but the rest of them were still _here,_ they still needed her, and selfish as it might be, sometimes he resents her for it. He loves her, of course he loves her, but if she has been the least able to excuse him, nor can he excuse her. “I asked Garcia and Lucy to help protect Jessica,” he says. “To send her away into time. I did it because I thought that if you knew that she was the one who attacked Gabriel and meant to kill Garcia, even if she was Temple’s thrall and didn’t know what she was doing, you’d kill her. I didn’t tell you back in New York, even after we left the Christophers’ house the way we did, because I didn’t trust you not to lose it. Maybe I’m to blame for this. I’m not going to deny it. But I want you to tell me if I was wrong.”

Maria starts to say something, then stops. She looks down at her hands, twisted on her knees. Wyatt has always found it strange that this petite, elegant, lovely brunette woman, who perpetually looks in her early thirties, is in fact possibly the oldest living creature on the planet, has been here for over three thousand years. Papa was about a hundred years older than her, but since his death, it’s indisputably Maria. She might have competition from those bristlecone pine trees or whatever else that can live for millennia, but of course no human or human-like being can come remotely close. She is a native speaker of ancient Greek – also the only one, since Asher died – no matter the languages and eras and empires that she has seen go by since then. Even _Maria de Clermont,_ the name and persona she has worn the longest, a great French lady and matriarch of their family, is far from her first life, extending back beyond all ordinary time. Do you forget, Wyatt thinks? Having lived that long, would you have to? The human brain, even supernaturally transfigured, was never designed to process three thousand years of memories and traumas. It would have to let go of parts of it, or even most of it, leave nothing but shapes and phantoms. Yet even if so, there are some things you never do, which are still too vital, that you carry with you into the dark.

“I don’t know,” Maria says at last, not looking up. “I don’t know if you were wrong, and that is my sin, not yours. But if nothing else, I hope that you will believe me when I say that Jessica is safe from me now. I do not, I cannot say that I understand. But I will not hurt her, and if this Sarah is indeed yours, so too is she safe.”

“No,” Wyatt says evenly. “Not good enough. Even if Sarah’s not mine, even if Jess had some random rebound fling after we broke up, I want you to say right now that she’s safe too.”

“Very well.” Maria’s shoulders stir with half a sigh. “No matter what, Sarah is safe from me. I will help you find her, as much as I will strive to find Cecilia. What I said, when I told Jack to call Temple – perhaps it was unwise, brazen and reckless. You are right. If nothing else, we should have learned by now the bitter toll of underestimating him.”

Wyatt considers that, then nods tightly. Considering that the last time they were in this city together, it was to attend his public deposition from the Congregation and the spectacular overthrow of everything that he had worked for, he’s definitely not about to do that. They remain there in silence, still not looking at each other. Then Maria says, “Do you trust Jack?”

“I…” Wyatt has to consider that. When he ran into Jack in Bologna, he has to admit that he wasn’t asking too many questions, and what Jack had to say sounded convincing enough to pack him off and give him a chance to prove it. Wyatt can’t say he was expecting to run into Maria, Rufus, and Jiya, much less Anton Sokolov, but it’s probably for the best that they know where the others are, if Temple is prowling around and inclined to pick off a few more to add to his collection of prisoners. For that matter, whether or not it’s a smart idea to call him, Wyatt’s surprised that Temple hasn’t called _them._ Doesn’t he want to gloat, goad them into going after Cecilia? Make sure they appreciate what a clever bastard he is, whatever?

“I don’t know,” Wyatt says in turn, since raw truth seems to be the name of the game. “But I also don’t know that we have a ton of choices for allies right now, and Jack does seem sincere in wanting to help us. I don’t think he would have told us about being turned by Hubbard and working with Temple, however unwillingly, if he was planning to spring that information on us later. I’m keeping an eye on him, believe me. But if we stay in Venice too much longer, we’ll get the Congregation factions on us, and then – ”

“Perhaps we should?” Maria suggests it in that cool, level, matter-of-fact way she does, that makes things sound almost plausible instead of totally insane. “We have Anton Sokolov, and considerable proof of Temple’s treachery. Not that I am remotely naïve enough to believe that presenting convincing evidence to a government body would be sufficient to make it change its mind, and the witch and daemon factions are already scheming against the vampires without any need for this. But still, this is a shock they cannot easily ignore. Besides, we are de Clermonts. Why should we act as if we are frightened of them, or as if their petty pronouncements have any power to harm us? This is nothing we should feel constrained to obey, to put on any mummer’s show for. And if we leave Venice meekly, tails between our legs, we only enable them to continue their plans to harm us and untold others.”

Wyatt blinks. He supposes that she does have a point, and he is not surprised that Maria, who has always been just as much of a warlord as any of the male de Clermonts, is in favor of an open assault rather than one more strategic retreat. Still, as the acting grandmaster, no matter how third-string quarterback, of the Knights of Lazarus, any call on that front would be his to make, and he isn’t entirely convinced of the necessity. “What? Start an outright creature war in Venice? _Maman,_ you know there’s no way that’s actually a good idea. I’m not saying we have to leave, but – ”

“They started the war already.” Maria gets up and paces a few steps down the hall, arms tightly folded, gazing up at the gilded angels on the rococo ceiling. “Perhaps we only pay them back in kind.”

Wyatt opens his mouth, then shuts it. He has just deterred her from one reckless move in calling Temple and announcing where they are, but this would have the same effect, and for much higher stakes. It does drag Temple’s evil conspiracies out before the vampires, though that leaves Benjamin Cahill and Nicholas Keynes with their subsidiary evil conspiracies on the witch and daemon fronts. Still, they can’t destroy all their enemies at once, much as Maria doubtless burns to, and Wyatt himself isn’t terribly in the mood for tiptoeing away and sitting on his ass. Temple has his kid, his daughter, _Jessica’s_ daughter, and he seems to be counting on the fact that the de Clermonts will be too divided and paralyzed to effectively oppose him. Maybe it’s time, in fact, to make the motherfucker fry.

“All right,” Wyatt says slowly. “Tell me what we want to do.”

This is how they spend the rest of the day and into the evening, shut up in the study and exchanging plans, scribbling on maps and arguing like a pair of generals in the field, trying to decide on the next route of march. Wyatt and Maria finally call it quits past midnight, go out to hunt in the wee hours of darkness and find a clandestine feed, then return to the villa before sunrise. Wyatt sleeps briefly, gets up and dressed, and returns to work.

The next several days also pass in this fashion, as Anton slowly recovers, Jiya and Rufus continue to tinker with the TimeMaster 3000, Jack keeps watch and occasionally goes out into Venice to search for information – after all, everyone still thinks he’s one of Temple’s associates, his presence won’t be questioned – and Wyatt and Maria plan a war. They are obviously aware of the fact that they can’t go in guns blazing in the middle of thousands of hapless humans, even if it’s still winter and far from the tourist high season, and that this is going to have to be careful, subtle, constraining the action to the places where humans don’t usually go. Or at least, having contingency plans in case it does go bad. Discreet orders are sent out to the Knights of Lazarus, informing all of them except for the ones stationed in Liechtenstein to guard Gabriel, to make their way to Venice as quickly and anonymously as possible. The moment is drawing near. For what exactly, that’s still under debate.

This project takes up another week, then two. Then Jack returns one evening to report that the rumor has made the rounds in Venice that the de Clermonts are back in town, in brazen defiance of their deposition, exile, and anathema, and this is the cause of considerable heat under certain creature collars. As they sit at supper, Anton proclaims that he is feeling much better, and wants to pay small visit to Congregation headquarters tomorrow. After all, he was unlawfully stripped of his seat, which was handed over to Emma Whitmore, and while nobody thinks that Emma is planning to hand it back, this will require a lot of fancy dancing if they continue to deny it to Anton. Wyatt is pretty sure that this plan can backfire in about eight hundred different ways, but even if so, they’re not off guard and defenseless. They’ve spent a fortnight preparing, they have Knights of Lazarus embedded across the city, and if Temple, Cahill, or Keynes want to throw their weight around again, they will find that it is a very different situation from last time. Rufus has been working on some gizmo that is intended to track down Temple via the rather prosaic method of his cell phone and personal data, but Wyatt does not cherish outstanding hopes for this technique’s success. Still, he hasn’t said this to Rufus. He does kind of like the guy.

Nonetheless, the prospect of imminent and dangerous action impresses a certain sobriety on the evening, and nobody says much as they go their separate ways after dinner. For his part, Wyatt goes out into the front hall, needing to check that everything is still in place. They obviously haven’t just been sitting in a city full of their enemies without proper precautions. Anton, as the witch in residence, has been casting advanced defensive spells, so even someone who has walked past the house every day for twenty years would be hard put to remember where it was. They trade off keeping watch, so someone is always awake, and Rufus has likewise improved all the technology and home security systems to an absurd degree. Still, they can’t be too careful. Wyatt gets paranoid any time a passersby stands outside for more than a few moments, even if they’re just admiring the architecture, and Rufus, as the only human, is no longer allowed to venture out without an escort.

Wyatt comes to a troubled halt in the dimness, only to jump a foot, bare his fangs, and flash around when he senses someone behind him. Just as quickly, of course, he realizes that it’s his mother, and snaps his mouth shut, embarrassed. “Yes, _Maman?”_

Maria doesn’t answer. For a moment, he thinks she hasn’t even heard him, or taken notice of his somewhat ill-timed threat display – which he won’t complain about, but still. By the uncertain moonlight peering through the curtains, which they mostly keep closed out of deference to vampiric sensibilities and for security, Wyatt can see that she’s holding the two pieces of paper, the brief, impersonal messages from Papa that were enclosed in the portrait frames of Garcia and Lucy. Maria’s hands look thin, almost fragile, where she clutches them, though those hands are capable of ripping a full-grown man’s head from his body. It’s only then, very belatedly, when she registers his presence. “What, Wyatt?”

The name still sounds strange, self-conscious, in her mouth, even though he can tell that she’s trying, and wants to say that it’s fine, she _is_ his mother, she can call him William from time to time if she wants. He frowns. _“Maman,_ if I was someone else, I could have jumped you by now. Are you all right?”

Maria gives him an arch look, as if to say that she does not need to do something as common as looking at someone to confirm their identity, already smelled him and knew he was not a threat, and therefore would have reacted entirely differently if it was necessary. “I am quite well,” she says. “I assume you must have a great deal to – ”

Just as Wyatt is realizing that she came out here to be alone with Asher’s letters, since she cannot be alone with Asher, the letterbox in the front door clicks. He frowns – _this_ time it’s definitely an unfamiliar scent, someone who shouldn’t be able to find this place – and sprints down the hall. But even as fast as he is, the messenger is gone by the time he arrives. Instead, there’s a creamy envelope lying on the tile. Wyatt hesitates, sees that it’s addressed to him, then picks it up and rips it open.

He scans the message, then swears under his breath, crumpling it in his fist, just as Maria appears in the foyer. The letters have vanished as if they have never been, the moment of vulnerability iced over in her usual cool and perfect competence, and her eyes are narrow. “Who was that?”

“I…” Wyatt thinks it’s best to let her see for herself. “Here. Look.”

Maria takes it and reads it, a ferocious scowl knitting her exquisite brows. The note is brief. It invites Wyatt to a meeting tomorrow at a café in the Piazza San Marco, nine o’clock AM, come alone or – well, it really would be best to do as asked. This offer is extended out of respect for an old professional colleague and gentleman of Wyatt de Clermont’s eminent social standing, and is made in the munificent spirit of avoiding embarrassments and complications. The deal on the table is fair for everyone, and merits at least some hearing-out. The note is not signed, but it doesn’t need to be.

“Temple,” Maria says, uttering the name as if is the filthiest curse imaginable – which, frankly, is about accurate. “Why would he be offering you a private meeting unless it was a trap? You can’t go alone. Once he also has the acting grandmaster in his snare, he would be well prepared to do absolutely anything he could – ”

“Or he’s scared,” Wyatt says. This is unlikely, but he wants to think on the bright side for once, sue him. “We’ve rescued Anton and we’re in the city _and_ Jack says that Temple is having a lot harder time at corralling the other vampires than he expected. They’re insistent  that the de Clermonts got screwed and unfairly railroaded – well, we did – and they won’t agree to any of his plans without one of us. Maybe he’s trying to strike a deal that I appear and do some good PR for him, and in exchange, he – I don’t know. He’s got a couple hostages. I’m not going to _agree_ to whatever he wants, but if it got us Cecilia, or Sarah – ”

Maria regards him worriedly. Both of them, to say the least, are not used to sitting down and planning their attack; they are very much of the old-school “run screaming at the bastards and make them shit themselves” brand of military tactics. But even as responsible and careful as they are uncharacteristically trying to be, they can’t stave off the guilt that they might have left Cecilia to some gruesome interrogation and torture, that they should in fact have taken any risk to find and rescue her. It’s not like Cecilia is a fainting flower, and she’s probably giving as good as she’s getting, but Wyatt imagines those letters in his mother’s hand. They couldn’t find Asher for two years, and look how that ended. It’s only been just over three weeks since Cecilia was taken, but the thought cannot help but occur to them both.

“You – ” Maria reaches out, gripping Wyatt’s forearms. “If you go, you must, you _must_ be careful, do you hear me? You’ve tried to outsmart Michel before, and that has not gone as we would have wished. Even at the deposition hearing, you had me with you. Or should I come again? I could stay hidden, I could – ”

 _“Maman.”_ Touched as Wyatt is by this evidence of maternal concern, it’s also not what he wants right now. “You wouldn’t suggest that you babysit Gabriel or Garcia. You’d trust them to do it, and to do whatever was needed. You were the one who suggested that we call Temple, so if we get a conversation out of this, that’s what we were gunning for anyway. You have to trust me. You have to let me do this. All right?”

Maria tilts her head back to look at him, her eyes dark and fearful. At last, she lifts her hand, cupping his cheek with her slim, elegant fingers. It is a clear reluctance to risk her last living and/or present son with their most dangerous enemy, the struggle to trust that fate would fall any way apart from the vindictive. Maria de Clermont has lost too many people, too many men she loved, and Wyatt is not insensible of the danger of what he’s proposing. He’s not _eager_ to face off against Temple mano-a-mano, but he isn’t going to shy from it. He _is_ the grandmaster, he is the head of this family right now, and he has a responsibility to Cecilia, to Sarah – and to Jess, wherever she is, whatever ass-end of the fifteenth century she might be stuck up. It’s probably the safest place for her, even if he does intend on ensuring that she’s retrieved later, but he was the one who argued for her to be sent there, and this is what happened to their daughter as a result. Maria is not the only parent here who fears losing their offspring, not the only mother separated from their child. Of course it’s a risky gambit. Everything is. And if they can get anything from it, they have to.

“I’m going,” Wyatt says. “If I don’t get back within a few hours – ”

He wants to tell Maria not to rage, not to give into revenge and bloodlust, that she will need to keep it together even if she loses him. The other part of him knows that his mother does not need any advice or platitudes on how to protect the family from the likes of him, and also fears that his loss would not be enough to occasion such spectacular displays. She tore the world apart and burned it to the ground when Asher died, she was willing to murder whoever poisoned Gabriel and nearly killed Garcia, but if she lost Wyatt, would she just…? Who knows. Resign herself to it? He hopes so, and he doesn’t, and he doesn’t know. At that moment, he feels almost as old as her.

Wyatt doesn’t say anything. He lifts his mother’s hand to his lips and kisses it cordially, as if making homage to a great lady in the twelfth century, when they met, when she made him. Then he turns, leaves her with the silent company of his father’s letters, and goes.

He doesn’t sleep that much that night. He hasn’t told anyone apart from Maria, not least because he’d waste more time trying to convince them otherwise rather than hearing any useful argument. The note said nine o’clock, but Wyatt isn’t going to take any chances on Temple arriving early and setting up whatever mousetrap he might have in mind. It’s not quite six when he gets out of bed, gets dressed, and slips down through the dark house. Shrugs on his jacket and hat, opens the door, and emerges into the streets.

Venice at this hour is eerie, enchanted, as remote from reality as a city in a snow globe. A sea fog has moved in overnight, settling thick on spires and statues, piazzas and palazzos, and the splashes from early-morning gondoliers sound as close to Wyatt as if they’re next to him, even without the amplification of supernatural hearing. The canals twist out of sight to strange places where a mortal man might fear to tread, the mist beads everything in silver and trickles down the streetlamps, and only a few Vespas are out, buzzing up narrow lanes with deliveries for grocers and florists. In this place that is otherwise so saturated with people, jam-packed at every hour of the night and day in summertime, Wyatt is in fact nearly alone, and he almost wishes that the walk would take longer, so he could have more time to enjoy it. It’s just a few minutes from the de Clermonts’ townhouse, which adjoins the Doge’s palace, into the piazza, San Marco presiding at the far end. Wyatt glances at it warily, as if snipers might be concealed in the bell tower, and wonders if he should go in there to wait. Temple might not actually burn on consecrated ground, but someone evil as him can’t be fond of it.

Wyatt, having spotted the café where Temple told him to meet and ascertaining that it’s not yet open anyway, decides on the San Marco course of action, pushing the heavy wooden doors open and entering the sanctuary. Silence lies on it like soft grey wool, the ornate columns and painted walls towering up into the dimness of the gilded domes and rich mosaics, and the prayer candles in the rack at the back are almost out, except for one old woman who probably comes here at this time of day to have her private devotions and doesn’t give a damn about when the basilica technically opens for visitors. She shoots a dark look at Wyatt, as if suspecting him of being insufficiently Catholic, but does not impede him, and he proceeds down the aisle beneath the heavenly splendor of the ceiling, a solitary sinner in the sight of God. The de Clermonts have had a complicated relationship with the Almighty for centuries, but Wyatt hopes – however vainly, and frankly without any proof whatsoever – that He still gives some kind of damn.

Wyatt comes to a halt before the altar, crosses himself and briefly genuflects. The glittering eyes of the pantheon gaze down at him, and he wonders what they see. San Marco is the magnificence of Byzantium brought back to Venice, said to be decorated with the spoils of the infamous sack of Constantinople that concluded the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It drips in gold and jewels and riches, but only if you forget the blood and death beneath. That strikes Wyatt as oddly fitting, and he thinks that he should find a vantage point where he can keep an eye on the square. He moves back, finds an out-of-the-way window, and whiles away an hour or so. Then when he can see the café opening, he leaves the basilica, strides across the fog-slick stones, and heads inside to order an espresso and sit by the steamed-up window. He wonders if the bastard is even coming, if this was a ploy to get Wyatt himself out of the house so Temple could go after the others, and decides that he can’t rule anything out. No fifteen-minute rule or whatever. If Temple isn’t here by the exact stroke of nine AM, Wyatt bails.

It’s 8:57 when the door jangles and – sending a small shock through Wyatt – Michael Temple strolls in, wearing a sharp-cut suit, fedora, and tailored overcoat and carrying a patent-leather briefcase, all of which makes him look straight out of central casting for soulless corporate dickhead villains. Affecting not to notice Wyatt, he goes to the counter, orders his own espresso in perfect, accentless Italian, and chats with the waitress, asking about her mother’s surgery and her goddaughter’s confirmation and other things that Wyatt can’t believe he has the least interest in, but has clearly cultivated her. Then, having received the demitasse cup and porcelain saucer, he walks over as casually as if for any other business meeting, sets his drink down on Wyatt’s table, and says, “Good morning. Long time, hasn’t it been?”

Wyatt clenches a fist. He can’t be openly rude until he finds out what the hell Temple wants, and the thought that Cecilia and Sarah’s treatment might rest on his response makes him, for once, hold his fire. He nods, stiff as ice, and Temple takes the chair across from him. “Cute place, isn’t it? Nice to be in Venice in the winter, without all the people.”

Wyatt utters a more or less cordial grunt. He is not about to be drawn into idle small talk, no matter if Temple thinks he can snake-charm him like the waitress. Finally he says, “Cut the crap, _Mike._ Why did you want to meet me?”

Temple raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t bristle. He takes a placid sip of his espresso, nods in approval, and looks at Wyatt’s own empty cup. “Can I get you another?”

“No thanks.” Like he wouldn’t slip an extra dose of manticore venom into that. “I imagine we both have lots to do, except my stuff isn't evil supervillainy, so – ”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Temple sits back. “Plenty for you to do here too, it seems. I wasn’t expecting you to return to the city, but no reason not to make it work to my – to our – advantage. You know I’ve always liked you, Wyatt. Tried to offer you advice, back when we were on the Congregation together. It’s a much less convivial atmosphere now, and I do regret that.”

“Advice?” Wyatt laughs incredulously. “You mean you tried to blackmail me whenever you got a chance and twist my arm into working with you, then threw me out and ordered my entire family arrested or hunted down or outlawed. So if it’s actually _less_ convivial, I’m afraid I don’t have a ton of sympathy for your bad workplace environment.”

“Fair, of course.” Temple nods smarmily. “I have, as the saying goes, made my own bed, and you are entirely within your rights to inform me to lie in it. But really, Wyatt, I have offered this meeting to help _you_ out, not me. Nor do I think you will find my terms unreasonable. I will assume that the witch Anton Sokolov is with you, since he’s certainly not where I left him, and it would concord with my other intelligences. Wouldn’t he like his Congregation seat back? The circumstances of him losing it were regrettable.”

“You have – ” Wyatt shouldn’t be surprised at anything that comes out of this man’s mouth, he really shouldn’t, and yet. “You have _some_ fucking nerve, since you were the reason he lost it. _And_ the one who imprisoned him for weeks. What did you do with Gennady, asshole?”

“I did, yes,” Temple says, entirely untroubled. “Back when that was the more advisable course of action. As for the younger Sokolov, nothing. He got away. He’s doubtless hiding out somewhere in the Siberian wilderness, killing bears with his bare hands, wearing large furry overcoats, drinking vodka, and other such quintessentially Russian things. If he hasn’t felt safe enough to return, that’s unfortunate, but nothing to do with me.”

“Just…” Wyatt reminds himself that there is, technically, a point to this. “Why the hell do you want to give Anton’s seat back? Emma Whitmore not as pliant as you hoped? You worked with her before, I’m not sure why that’s a surprise.”

“That is beside the point. Suffice it to say, I _am_ willing to give it back, no strings attached.” Temple pauses to sip his espresso. “Or rather, since it is his call to make as the most senior witch on the Congregation, Benjamin Cahill is. In some circumstances, we could see our way to a deal that restores yours as well. It was always what you valued the most, Wyatt. You must miss it. And back in the halls of power, you could work to repeal anything we were doing that you didn’t care for. Of course, it might be awkward for you to see Mr. Houdini every day, given the things he’s been saying about your family, but that’s certainly the easiest of the bridges you’d have to mend. What do you say? Don’t you want things back the way they were? It’s entirely possible. I don’t hold grudges. Let’s do business again.”

Wyatt opens his mouth, then shuts it. He, of course, used to cling onto his Congregation seat like it was the only thing in the world, and while he is not in the least burdened by excess loyalty to that particular organization anymore, he is still momentarily tempted. Of course Temple wouldn’t be offering this without about a thousand nefarious ulterior motives, but there _is_ the fact that it would get him back in the room where it happens. It would be a hell of a lot easier to keep track of what everyone was doing if he was there, and he _could_ maybe stop some things. He knows how the Congregation works, after all. He could throw sand in the gears. If it was anyone besides Temple offering, Wyatt might say yes, but… it _is_ Temple. He can’t actually want Wyatt back to thwart him more effectively, though admittedly that is, as Maria pointed out, sometimes generous for how their head-to-head battles turn out. If Temple is completely convinced that Wyatt is a useful stooge, the most incompetent de Clermont, and can rope him in to placate the vampires who want their most prominent and powerful family back, but not risk actually derailing anything he’s planning, then… what? Go in and play double agent?

“That’s interesting,” Wyatt says coolly. “What, you couldn’t get anywhere with Cecilia? Bet she kicked your ass every time you tried to get anything from her, didn’t she?”

Temple chokes on his third sip of espresso, and puts it down, dabbing at his mouth with the napkin. “I’m surprised none of the de Clermonts have taken more interest in her, frankly. I thought she was a valued member of your family, and I _did_ expect to see more effort to rescue her. But then, Wyatt, you know that they don’t have any trouble in throwing away those who are no longer useful to them. How is Jessica? Or should I say, _where_ is Jessica?”

“Shut up.” Wyatt’s managed to keep his temper thus far, however unevenly, but that cuts. “Shut up, you son of a bitch. Where’s my kid?”

“Sarah?” At last, Temple looks genuinely surprised. It’s clear that he didn’t realize Wyatt knew about her, and he takes several moments to respond, as if reeling through what else he might know and if he might indeed be a worthy enemy. “Ah, so you’ve finally heard? Can’t feel good that Jessica kept her existence entirely secret from you, knowing that your sweet and merciful mother might kill both of them, doesn’t it?”

Since this is an exact thought Wyatt has had, he struggles not to let it show on his face. Temple has always been good at these devastating hits much too close to the mark; he’s a predator, a master manipulator, a shark at the scent of blood. At last Wyatt growls, “If you’re torturing her – a six-year-old girl, I _swear_ I am going to end your entire – ”

 _“Torturing_ her?” Temple actually has the temerity to look wounded. “Why on earth would you think that? No, no, no, no. I daresay little Miss Sarah Proctor has never had so much fun in her life. She gets to live with me in my fancy house, I buy her dolls and toys and candy, take her on outings, spoil her absolutely rotten, and shower all the love and affection on her that she, sadly, has never had from a father. Though really, I think she sees me more as a doting great-uncle, and it’s a role I am more than happy to play. Promising little half-breed, isn’t she? Already more powerful than any recent vampire sired or witch born. That must be the key. The creatures have inbred themselves to a point of degeneracy and weakness, just like any other genetic sample where one marries one’s own cousins too often. But it’s something we’ll keep between us for now, won’t we, Wyatt?”

Wyatt doesn’t answer. He clutches the table, exerting every drop of self-control not to leap across it and tear out Temple’s throat. The idea of Temple torturing his daughter was bad enough, but the idea of him playing her doting caretaker, poisoning her young mind with his gifts and his lies, is somehow even worse. He feels sick, scorching up behind his eyes, hammering in his head like drums. “Fuck you,” he says, half a whisper. “Why are – ”

“If you were back on the Congregation, we could discuss releasing her to your custody, couldn’t we?” Temple raises an eyebrow. “While we track down Jessica from whatever temporal entanglement she’s ended up in, and then maybe the three of you could finally have the happy family you’ve always deserved. I do have a few ideas. My recent visit to Bologna was rather helpful in that department, if you can think of any reason why. Perhaps you might want to make some visits of your own? Say… to Liechtenstein?”

A forbidding, freezing chill drips down Wyatt’s back. He manages to keep his expression neutral, as well as his voice. “Why would I have anything to visit in Liechtenstein?”

“Catch up with family, you know.” Temple is watching him very closely. “By the way, how is your brother Gabriel? We haven’t heard from him for quite a while.”

“Gabriel’s… busy,” Wyatt says. “Out of the country. You know him, always on the go. Art shows to attend, important people to meet.”

“While the rest of your family is in crisis, hiding from their fellow creatures, and faced with these terrible dilemmas? How uncharacteristic.” Temple finishes off his espresso and sets the cup back on the saucer, then prods it with one finger, setting it spinning. “As well, the French society papers, who normally pay a great deal of interest to his exploits, have had nothing to say of him either. If he _was_ off living the high life while the rest of you were fighting this secret war, I imagine you’d resent him too, but – ” He shrugs, as the cup tips over, rolls off the saucer, and smashes on the floor. “Perhaps that is _just Gabriel for you.”_

Wyatt doesn’t answer. Despite his best efforts, panic is starting to spread through him, sludgy and black as an oil spill. The offer of his and Anton’s Congregation seats back, and restoring – or rather, introducing – Sarah to him was the carrot, and the stick is now being made extenuatingly clear. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s Gabriel. Kind of an irresponsible dick, when it comes down to it. We were discussing your offer, so – ?”

“Oh, I’ve been clear, haven’t I? The rest of it is for you to think over. Doubtless you’ll be able to find me.” Temple pushes his chair back and gets to his feet, picking up his briefcase. He clicks it open to dig out a newspaper, as if he’s going to sit on the plaza and read, and Wyatt catches a glimpse of an old leather-bound book stuffed inside, its pages browned and held together by a length of string. Seeing him looking, Temple does not seem perturbed. “Something else I’ve acquired recently,” he says. “Found it in an antiquarian bookshop in Paris. It’s a journal from the late sixteenth century, I’ve found it very interesting and useful in planning my activities. The name of the author – if it rings a bell – was certainly familiar to me. Lady Lucy de Clermont. Have you heard of her?”

Not waiting for Wyatt’s answer, he smiles, removes today’s editions of _La Repubblica_ and _La Nuova Venezia,_ and tucks them under his arm. Then he claps on his hat, opens the café door out into the clearing mist, the faint, watery sun, and with that, he is gone.

* * *

For the first several hours out of Prague, Gabriel is still so beside himself that he can barely spare a thought for anything else. His mind dwells obsessively on the grievance, the scale of the betrayal, how, _how_ Garcia could not have told him, until there is barely space for anything else, picking it over and over until the scab is opened and bleeds anew. Gabriel feels as if he has been the one thrown from the window, sent head over heels, plunging and plunging until everything he thought he knew about the world is no longer true. _You knew,_ he reminds himself bitterly. _You knew, you_ knew _he was not your Garcia, that he had more secrets and would not tell them._ And at the time, Gabriel had been willing to accept that, if only because he could never dream that Garcia, in any incarnation or from any time or by whatever strange magic winged him here, could keep something like this from him. _He’s right. He’s right. We’ve changed, we’ve gone, we’ve lost it. Everything._

In a brief and deeply unwanted moment of self-reflection, Gabriel wonders if his refusal to tell them the full truth about Henry de Prestyn’s death – at least until Lucy got it out of him, because truly, what else can anyone do to him that is worse? – is comparable to Garcia’s transgression on the subject of Christian’s. Almost as quickly, however, he decides that it is not. It was best for everyone for him to keep that back, to play down what could have rippled into an international incident beyond all ordinary political or magical boundaries, and Gabriel is admittedly lucky that Kit likes him, or at least likes fucking him, enough to keep his mouth shut on both brothers’ behalf. Though that too was for Garcia. Of course it was. _Perhaps I should invite Marlowe to accompany me to the New World instead. Maybe it will finally be far enough for the pair of us to get away from him._

Gabriel leans back on the hard carriage seat, swearing under his breath. He has not failed to notice that Christian, Jack, and Edward are all exchanging some species of censorious glance, and while Gabriel is presently far from his scintillating best, he should not be judged by his son, a grubby urchin, and a valet. The slow, bumping pace of the carriage on the muddy road, the knowledge that he could be making three times the speed at least, and the desperate need to put more space between himself and the site of the injury is an intolerable combination. He raps on the roof, and the coachman rattles to a halt, confused. “My lord?”

“Let me out,” Gabriel says. “I think I’ll run most of the way. Continue onto Sept-Tours as we planned, I shall meet you there.”

The coachman is aware, of course, that his master is a vampire, though he still looks rather dubious. Gabriel shucks his cloak and checks his boots, but as he is swinging out of the carriage, Christian clears his throat. “I think I’ll come too.”

Gabriel raises an eyebrow, as Christian did not seem particularly fond of his company earlier, but perhaps the boy thinks that he’ll just keep running straight across the Atlantic unless kept a proper eye on. Fine, it can’t hurt to keep an eye on him in return. No matter if Christian is supposed to die (Jesus, Gabriel can barely stand to _think_ it – how could Garcia just look at the boy and say nothing, _nothing –_ and his anger surges hot and black again) in 1762, a hundred and seventy-two years from now, no use in taking chances. Besides, there’s not much room for talking on a run, but maybe the experience will recollect Christian to the fact that Gabriel does want the best for him and can be trusted to provide it. At least starting from now. Gabriel’s not that fond of the idea of giving up his drink and his lovers, but if it will convince Christian of his moral rectitude and paternal authority, he’s willing to entertain it. Perhaps the Americas will also be far enough to get away from the need for them.

Christian exchanges a word with Jack, telling the boy to obey Edward and that they shall reunite at Sept-Tours in a week or so, then jumps out of the carriage. There’s a challenging expression on his face, if he fully intends to prove that he is his father’s equal and can keep up with any trial he chooses to set. “Very well, Papa,” he says. “Let’s go.”

And thus, they do. They lower their heads, brace themselves, and burst into a glorious, unfettered rush of supernatural speed, blazing across the Bohemian countryside and both trying to outstrip the other. It is at once the usual masculine competition at sporting events and something else, the old way of the world, the tale of how the son must rise up to replace the father, peaceably or otherwise. Yet, of course, they are vampires, and short of something such as this monstrous, unspoken evil that will steal Christian away, Gabriel will not die. The king will not step down nor lie in his coffin, the natural order frozen forever at a point of stillbirth, preserved in a painting, unchanged, unchanging, rather than allowed to progress in the natural cycle. Christian is not of the ambitious temperament, not the sort of son who would have stuck a knife in his father’s back to hasten his birthright even if Gabriel was a mortal man. But he _is_ a grown man and a considerably powerful vampire, and even Gabriel finds himself lagging behind as the run continues. He has been busy with soft living and countless diversions, the glittering lap of luxury that is London and its scandals. Very well. The New World will help burn that away, forge him back to the height of his strength and his steel, make him new. That is what he needs. Nothing, no one else, save his son.

They run all day and past dusk, into the stuffy velvet twilight, into the dark woods of Germany. There is a stag there, startled and spooking, bounding away through the bracken – fast, but not nearly fast enough. They catch it, kill it, and Gabriel has a feed, the warm, iron-tasting, earthy animal musk of its blood burning through him like good liquor, attuning him to the wild, the scents of the underbrush and the small creatures that dart and skitter in the shadows, the running water and the direction of the wind. Christian kneels next to him, intending to take his turn, but Gabriel says, “Wait.”

Christian pauses, surprised, as Gabriel undoes the neck of his doublet and beckons him close. He cannot be sure that Christian will not bridle at this too, since vampires customarily feed from their sires mostly as fledglings, when they need as much minding and care as human infants. At least if the sires are conscientious parents and understand their responsibilities. Gabriel thinks again of Father Hubbard and his hive of hollow-eyed, hungry, fanatic children, and a stab of rage goes through him. Perhaps it is even a small mercy that he killed that one that stumbled upon him and Kit at their gory work, rather than have him return to that life. But this is a comforting thing to do, something to repair their recently-tested bond, and he does want Christian to feel his love, to know that this _is_ the best thing for them, that that is the only reason Gabriel would do it. “Come, my love,” he says. “As you like.”

Christian hesitates, clearly thinking of all this as well, whether he wants to accept the flag of truce, whether he wishes to emphasize that his father does not need to feed him and he is perfectly capable of procuring his own meals – might run off and take down his _own_ stag, just to put a point on it. But after a moment, he slides over on the leaves, bares his fangs, and leans in. Gabriel rests his chin on Christian’s head and hums softly. “There, my lad,” he says, murmuring small nothings, the way he did when Christian first opened his eyes and the change came on him, the thirst, the confusion, and the endless love. “There you go.”

Christian starts to feed, as Gabriel braces one elbow on his knee and keeps an eye on the forest, tallying in his head how far they have run today. He reckons that they are halfway to Sept-Tours, and might make it sometime tomorrow if they were to run all night. Rejuvenated by the feed, they could be able to do that, and Gabriel is enough of a connoisseur that he would prefer to sleep in his own bed rather than the roots and branches of the forest. Besides, what with Papa, Garcia, and Lucy all due to converge on the place at some point in the near future, it might be best if Gabriel is the first to tell his side of the story to _Maman_ , Cecilia, and William. This will be rather unpleasant as it is, and he could use some allies.

After a few more moments, Christian pulls back. He looks pleased, satiated, but a frown draws his brows together. “Papa, why are you so worried about me?”

Ah, Gabriel realizes. Yes, of course. He has diligently hidden all the details of the confrontation, anything specific that Christian might be able to see when feeding on him, but has not managed to kick all of it into the box under the bed. “Can a father not be concerned for his child?” he says, as lightly as possible. “It is the state of being a parent, my love.”

“Maybe, but this was different. It was… strong. Whatever you’re doing this for – Papa, I _told_ you to tell me. Is this about me? Whatever you and Uncle Garcia quarreled about?”

Gabriel hesitates. He doesn’t want to lie, but he doesn’t want to tell the truth either. Finally he says, “Your uncle and I quarreled about a number of things, of which one had something to do with you. You should not give it excess credence, truly. That said – ”

 _“Excess credence?”_ Christian looks at him as if he has grown two heads. “Am I a judge or jury, and you a barrister of the Inns of Court, telling me what or what not to credit in the trial? Who is on trial here, Papa, truly? _Is_ this about me? You know I do not want you and Uncle Garcia to fight, I have never wanted that, and before now, you rarely did! If we are – ”

“We are not.” Gabriel gets to his feet, feeling as if that may have been a mistake. “Look, the moon is rising. We should have good light for the rest of our run. Do you not want to see your grandmother, my love? And William, you two are such friends. So – ”

 _“Now_ you bribe me with a visit to family? Ah yes, before we leave them for two hundred years?” Christian’s face is burning in the way vampires do when angry, not flushed, but raw and incandescent. “Unless we propose to pack them up and take them with us? If that is so, I have no _notion_ what you mean by this, but – no. No. I cannot _look_ at you right now.”

With that, as if in demonstration that they will indeed be running to Sept-Tours tonight and half of that will be Gabriel trying to catch him, Christian turns around and lights out like an exploding cannon. The trees rustle and sway where he passes, like a thunderbolt made flesh, carving a seam through the forest, up one side of the hill and out of sight down the other. Gabriel stands there, bedeviled and at a loss to explain how that turned so bad so quickly, and then decides that he had best get moving if he does not want to arrive entirely to the hindmost. Even for him, this will be a long run in one go, and he will need some time to sleep and recover his strength before the vultures descend.

Even with the reinforcement of the feed, the exertion is burning in Gabriel’s immortal bones by the time the air begins to smell familiar, the early-rising summer sun hoisted over the horizon to eat into his speed just that bit, as he more or less has kept Christian in sight ahead of him but never been able to pull quite abreast. Finally he gives in, and makes the last few miles at a sort of wounded-dog trot, following the road through the half-timbered cottages and old church of the village, up the hill to the wolf-and-lion gates, and the great home of the de Clermont family, its seven towers and rambling walls, that lies beyond.

The first thing that Gabriel notices is that the courtyard is already peopled, most prominently by a windblown and angry-looking Christian – and by his mother. Unlike her eldest son, Maria de Clermont has never been excessively attached to the demands of fashion in any particular year; when she finds something that she likes, she wears it as long as she pleases, and reshapes the expectations of polite society to conform to it. Thus her dress from a hundred years ago is rich and elegant, blue silk and white gauze, her hair pinned in two coiled braids at each side of her head, a fluttering golden veil held in place by a jeweled band. She looks like an embroidered woman in a tapestry, the Lady and the Unicorn, or a queen in the illuminations of a manuscript, beautiful and timeless and elegantly stylized. She also looks – that does not bode well – transcendently outraged. Bloody hell, already?

 _“Maman,”_ Gabriel says, trying not to pant too openly, as he jogs up, trying to pretend that he has not spent the last day and night running all the way from Prague with the diversion of several major family arguments before and between. “How lovely you look this morning.”

Maria eyes him up and down: his torn clothes, the mud on his boots, the sticks in his hair, the general air of disrepair and disrepute. Her nostrils flare, in the way they do when she simply cannot find the sufficiently devastating combination of words to express her extreme displeasure. _“You_ look like a vagabond.”

“It has been – an eventful few days.” Gabriel waits for her to offer her hand to kiss, but she does not. “When did Christian get here?”

“Not long since.” Maria regards them with the sort of scrutiny that feels like flaying knives to every tender part of you. “I thought the pair of you were in London – especially you, Gabriel. Then there was some letter from your father about it being Prague instead. Christian says you have come all that way with scarcely a rest? What on _earth –_ is the world afire behind you? What else could impel you to such urgency?”

Both Gabriel and Christian start to speak at the same time, interrupt each other, and stop – just as the heavy front door opens and Cecilia emerges, followed by William. Cecilia has never entirely eschewed her abbess roots, and wears a simple black dress resembling a habit, a linen wimple pinned beneath her chin, and a cross around her waist on a string of wooden beads. By contrast, William looks as if he too might be out for a run and hunt, clad in workmanlike doublet, breeches, and boots, but both of them stop short at the sight of the new arrivals. Christian hurries past his grandmother to clasp hands and clap shoulders with his youngest uncle, to whom he has also always been very close. “William. Thank Christ. Someone has to help me hold Papa down while I hit him with a rock.”

William blinks. “Gabriel, what in hellfire did you do this time? For that matter, what are you _doing_ here? Weren’t you – ”

“Prague, aye,” Gabriel says impatiently. “We’re here now, matters have changed, and we have something rather important to inform you of. Should we go within?”

Maria considers him, seems to decide that he has already done enough self-inflicted injury to his dignity by arriving like this, and before he strips himself of any more of it, he should at least wash and change his clothes. She grants permission with the tiniest, icily regal inflection of her chin, then turns on her heel and sweeps inside, leaving the rest of them to trail in after her. Gabriel, thinking it best to escape before Cecilia can continue to stare at him with both eyebrows raised, escapes up the stairs to his tower and shuts the door behind him. Home. Jesus. It rattles against his eyes as if refusing to quite sink into his brain, that he could be in one place yesterday and so decidedly in another today, and on the brink of informing his mother and family about his intentions to summarily depart for the New World. He can’t drown on the crossing, so it is no matter to him when they sail, but they might have to travel to Spain for a ship, and most human captains won’t set out any later than August. Even that might be cutting it fine, and Gabriel does not intend to spend the out-of-season months here, or any time whatsoever that he does not have to. He has to go. He _has_ to. They will winter in Cadiz if they must, or anywhere else. Away. _Away._

He peels off his filthy shirt and doublet, goes over to the trunk, and begins to root through it in search of clean apparel. He _is_ rather messy and should bathe first, though he doubts that Cecilia wants to be tasked with fetching water for him. There should be enough in the pitcher that he can at least make a presentable showing and scrub away the worst of the mud, and the knowledge that Christian is likely giving the others a vehement account of Gabriel’s apparent madness means that he cannot foofaraw about up here. The room is open and airy, stacked with Gabriel’s books, letters, hunting bow – for when he goes out with humans, not vampires, and must practice the noble art of archery – goblets, daggers, and tokens from various lovers, along with not a few fervent proposals of marriage. Yet this bed, and the room in general, is the only one Gabriel owns in which he has never coupled with a lover of any description. This is where he nursed Christian as a fledgling, where he comes to shut the world out on the occasions that even he has his fill of it, and where he has spent countless hours with Garcia, talking or feeding or discussing strategy for whatever war they were next to set out on, or simply enjoying each other’s company. Nobody else, not even his parents, often comes in here; this is his, is _their_ sanctum, their kingdom. _Was._ He suddenly wants to burn the whole thing to the ground. It will be destroyed soon enough anyway.

Gabriel swears again, not under his breath this time, and washes his face viciously, splashing water through his thick black hair and the turf of stubble on his jaw, rinsing off his neck and shoulders and grabbing a clean shirt. He pulls it over his head and tucks it into his breeches, finds a relatively clean doublet, and does up the embroidered buttons. There. A madman could not look this put together, could he? At any event, it will have to do. He takes a deep breath, mutters a prayer to give him strength, and then spins on his heel.

He descends the spiral stairs of the tower into the main house, and follows the sound of voices to the solar. He knocks perfunctorily, then lets himself in – until his father arrives, he is the most senior man of the house, and does not intend to start this off by bowing and scraping. His mother, his son, his brother, and Cecilia are all inside, but at his entrance, they break off from their conversation, and Gabriel is thus subject to the silent scrutiny of four pairs of eyes. Then Maria says, “Christian was just telling us a peculiar tale, my dear.”

Since Maria only calls anyone her dear in that particular tone when she’s very cross with them indeed, Gabriel tries not to let his wince show on his face. He loves his mother very much, but she has no right, not here, not in this, to tell him what he can or must do. After a weighted moment in which they all seem to be waiting for him to account for himself, he says, “Christian has had some difficulty accepting the necessity of it, yes. But I – ”

“Christian is not the only one!” Ah, yes, there it is. Maria de Clermont is never one to keep her fury on rein for too long. She swirls to her feet and strides across the solar like a general twice her size, driving her elegant finger into Gabriel’s chest. _“Running off to the New World?_ Have you lost your _mind?_ Something about a terrible quarrel with Garcia, plucking your skirts up and flouncing off from Prague with no more ceremony than a drunkard thrown headlong out of a tavern? A drunkard being something with which you are acquainting yourself quite closely, if your father’s letters from London are anything to go by! This lewd spectacle with Christopher Marlowe and half the aristocratic wives of the city – do you _want_ to make yourself a public laughingstock and known fornicator, and drag the family name and reputation _entirely_ through the mud? I heard that Queen Elizabeth herself has complained of your behavior, and for once I cannot blame her! They customarily hang horns on cuckolds, but they could do with hanging a few on you!”

Gabriel takes a step back, despite himself, under this withering maternal assault. He can sense that it will be pointless to glance around in search of support. Christian has already run off and betrayed him like this, the faithless little bugger, and William will take Christian’s side, not Gabriel’s. For all that they are blood brothers, they have never been that close, and William, despite being Christian’s uncle, is younger than him by a few centuries and has lived with him as brothers instead. As for Cecilia, she is observing all of this with the cool, unreadable expression she wears when watching the de Clermont sons do something that she considers ill-judged, which means she wears it often. She lives here with Maria while the men are at war, and is likewise a safe ally in her camp. Is Gabriel entirely alone in this? Great bloody lot of support and help his own family is, truly. Right bunch of Judas Iscariots.

 _“Maman,”_ Gabriel says, in a placating tone. “Please, let us think more calmly about this. I would not have proposed it unless there was a very good reason, and – ”

“And?” Maria demands, practically breathing fire. “What reason can this possibly be, my son? If it can at all explain what you have done, or what you _think_ you – ”

Gabriel hesitates. He cannot unveil what he has been told, he cannot go there – at least not directly, and not without making some gesture as to how he would even know in the first place. Instead he says, “Has Papa mentioned in those letters that the Garcia we have been acquainted with the past three months, the Garcia who suddenly turned up with a witch he claimed to be married to – that Garcia is not ours? He is an impostor, some alternate self brought here by the witch’s magic from a far-distant future. He knows, and never shared, many terrible things about this future, and frankly, I am more than half convinced that he means to ensure that they all happen, rather than to avert them. One of the things he told me under sufferance pertained to Christian, and my decision to remove us both to the New World, for whatever time should be necessary, is to take us far from that.”

At that, there is – understandably – a stunned silence in the solar. Cecilia and William clearly have not heard of this at all, and while Asher must have told Maria some of it, she too looks thrown. “Your father said that the circumstances impelling his journey to London proved to be more complicated than imagined, that there was more to Garcia’s actions than met the eye, and that he would tell me all when he returned, as there were some things he felt too dangerous to confide to a letter. This – what is this, what do you mean? If he is not your brother, where is – where is Garcia, what – for three months?”

“He has been sent away on some nonexistent errand, I believe.” Gabriel turns on his heel, staring at the unlit fireplace, gripping hold of the plaster mantelpiece. “To ensure that he does not interfere with whatever this one means to do, or his presence in this century. I do not know. I am not denying that this Garcia is still himself somehow, but so changed and darkened and distanced by whatever has happened to him that he is barely like the one we know. I thought that did not matter, once I learned of it. That things could nonetheless be more or less as they were before. I was very wrong.”

Maria and Cecilia glance at each other. “Does he mean us harm?” Cecilia asks at last, composedly. “This other Garcia, this impostor you speak of, who has come here in company with a strange witch and lied to you and perhaps us all?”

“I don’t know.” Gabriel sits down. “I would not have said so. I – I drank his heartsblood, when Papa begged us to reconcile in London. I did not taste any open deceit then, nor desire to harm, or else I would not have forgiven him as swiftly as I did, desperate to bind us once more together and forget whatever had separated us. I – did not handle it well, I suppose, when he first appeared with a wife that he would tell me nothing about. That is another lie, by the by, as they are not truly wed, nor was Garcia making her much husbandly service – at least at first. Lucy is. . . brave, and clever, and kind. I did not see that at first, nor do I much wish to admit to it, but it is so. I thought at first that she had some evil influence over Garcia, but now I believe it is the pair of them in some mutual conspiracy of unknown purpose. She used black magic to make a golem, and while we are lucky that she did, it means that the true depths of her power have likewise been hidden from us. I no longer trust either of them, and I urge you strongly to do the same.”

“Uncle Garcia is – ?” Christian looks stunned. “What do you mean, he’s not – ? And Aunt Lucy, she – no. No, Papa, you’re wrong. Whoever they really are, they would never hurt us. This is insane. You’re – you could never.” He turns appealingly to the others. “This is – this is madness. I don’t know why he is – no. Grandfather trusted them. We have to wait until he arrives and hear what he has to say. He said he would explain.”

This is, to Gabriel’s irritation, a compelling point. Maria is unlikely to ultimately believe anything without hearing from Asher, and Gabriel has done himself no initial favors by stumbling in here like a ranting, raving wildman. If they were initially veering toward him, they might have veered back, and the silence makes a noticeable return. Gabriel’s frustration almost chokes him, his desire to shake them and make them all understand. “Garcia and Lucy have been looking for a book,” he says. “Some sort of magical manuscript, which they call Ashmole 782 but is known to us as the Book of Life. They acquired part of it in Prague, and a dangerous enemy that followed them from London, a powerful creature called David Rittenhouse. Not quite witch, vampire, or daemon, but an unholy blend of each, with all their abilities and no scruples in the least. I advise keeping watch on the skies and surrounds, lest he tries to attack us here. I have had a long night and then some. I am going to bed.”

With that, before anyone can say anything else, before they can come up with any other tired, tedious excuse to throw at him, to argue with him, Gabriel makes his exit. He strides through the stone halls, climbs the stairs to his room, draws the curtains and bars the door, and is not sure that he has ever wished more badly in his long life for rest, for cessation, for darkness. He climbs into bed, and falls headfirst into a black and welcoming abyss.

Gabriel has no idea how long he sleeps – it could be months, years, everything changed and the world gone, and he is not sure that he would mind. When he finally opens his eyes again, the light has a fine golden-gauzy quality that looks like morning, and he wonders if he has slept the day and the night again, which would not be surprising. He still feels utterly wretched, but fired with grim purpose, and he sits up slowly, recollecting himself and sorting over scraps of a plan in his head. Nothing coherent yet, nothing that he can put into words, or indeed practical action. But if his family does not want him to run off to the New World – and likewise, Gabriel can admit that he would prefer not to leave his entire life, his home, his habits, the familiar comforts of Europe, if there was another way – then, perhaps, is there one? The false Garcia and Lucy will be coming here. They have the book, or at least some part of it. If they mean anything they say, why not prove it? Why not force Lucy to use the very Book of _Life_ to undo whatever evil chains of fate hold Christian in their sway, right there and then? If they mean what they say about caring for Christian too, if any trust or faith or love should be reposed in them again, how could they possibly refuse? And if they did – if he knew them once and for all as false and treacherous fetches, conjurations of dark magic that would have to be destroyed for the good of –

(No, no, no. He does not want to think it, or want even to entertain it. But the thought is there now, and cannot be altogether banished.)

Gabriel gets up, washes and grooms properly, and gets dressed. He is keen to avoid another argument with Christian, and when he descends into the main house, he discovers that his father is not yet here, but expected sometime today. To that, Gabriel thinks it is wise of him to go out to the road by which Asher will be arriving, and see if he can head him off at the pass. If his entire case hangs on getting his father to believe him, and not whatever secret agreements he entered into with the false Garcia in London, it should be attended to away from the interference of the rest of the family. Gabriel pulls on his still-muddy boots and leaves Sept-Tours by the back route.

It is a lovely morning, clear and blue and cut with just that first hint of autumn, the end of summer, the promise of golden leaves and shorter days, the coming cold and snow. He walks quickly, trying to reconcile himself to the necessity of what he will have to do. He does not want to hurt Lucy, despite everything, and even if this Garcia is not his, Gabriel knows damn well that he would never be able to kill him. But why should it be a violent affair, truly? They are the ones in the wrong, and have seemed desperate to make up with him. Use the book, the book they have, they _have._ Then nobody needs to run to the New World, and nobody needs to engage in anything unpleasant. A happy ending for everyone.

Gabriel reaches the old Roman cairn by the road, which he remembers seeing built not long after he, Papa, and _Maman_ moved to Gaul in the early… what was it, third century? Sept-Tours was a Roman villa when they first built it a few miles from here; the present building was a Merovingian monastery, put up in the fashion for Christianization after Clovis converted. The de Clermonts took opportune possession of it, improved and expanded it, though the monks never did come back once the tales of what they truly were began to circulate. Christ, that was a long time ago. Back when they were only three, and happy.

Gabriel climbs a nearby tree where he can see for several miles, and spends the morning up in the branches, still as a hunting cat, waiting to jump down the instant he spots his father. Will Asher be riding or running? Presumably, if he wanted to make expeditious time from London, he would have used human transport only insofar as to sail across the Channel, then run the rest of the way. Horses unused to vampires tend to be skittish around them, so it is more convenient to have your own animals. But if Asher is coming today, he will –

It is just past noon when Gabriel finally spots a small figure on the road, far enough at first that he cannot be sure they are coming in this direction. They are on foot, sporadically disappearing and reappearing behind the hills, and moving fast enough that it can’t be a human. Gabriel leaps down from the tree and starts down the road, to –

As the traveler appears from around the bend, dusty and footsore and stained with mud and grime, indeed looking rarely better than Gabriel did last night, he stops short. It isn’t his father. It’s Garcia, looking as if he ran through hell backwards with bare feet to get here, and somewhat surprisingly, he is alone. He must have left Lucy at a coaching inn to make better time – Gabriel wonders if they ran into his carriage, she could have ridden here at her leisure with Jack and Edward – and very well. If they’re going to properly have it out, it should be with no witnesses. “Truly a valiant effort, my darling,” Gabriel says coldly, leaning against the tree with arms folded. “Where did you leave the witch?”

Garcia stops short, sees him, and stares. He looks utterly baffled (a cruel comment could be made about that being Garcia’s perpetual state of being, but still). Then a look of unbearable relief spreads across his face, and he hurtles forward. “Jesus! Gabriel! Are you all right?!”

He has spoken in Old French, the usual language between them, rather than the English they have used more recently, and Gabriel frowns. He is not going to let Garcia off the hook, nor to pretend nothing is wrong. As Garcia is about to throw himself into his arms, he catches him by the shoulder and pushes him back. “No games. No lies. What do you mean by this? Where’s the witch?”

“What witch?” Garcia stares at him, even more flummoxed. “I don’t – Christ, I’ve practically killed myself getting back here from Dalmatia, when that letter arrived to tell me so. It was a trap, Corvinus’s library wasn’t found. Some kind of trick, I don’t know why or how, but – ” Deciding that words are unimportant and can go hang, he seizes hold of Gabriel by both shoulders, gazing desperately into his face. _“Moje srce,_ are you hurt? Is the family – ?”

At that, Gabriel feels a sensation as if he has been doused in freezing water. As he stares back at Garcia, who looks even more worried, it dawns on him in a burst of terrifying, thrilling realization that – impossibly – _this_ _is his Garcia._ The original one, the one who was supposed to be here in 1590 all along, sent conveniently out of the way by the false one. It explodes in his chest like ecstasy and agony, tears his spine and his heart out at once, and all of a sudden, desperately, he clutches back. “You,” he gasps. “You. My God, it’s _you.”_

Garcia looks stumped that this was not obvious, but nods. He starts to say something else, but gets no further as Gabriel crushes him wildly in his arms, Garcia hugs him just as wildly back, they bang their noses, kiss, kiss again, bury their faces in each other’s shoulders, and sink in a dazed, gulping, dazzled heap to the ground. Gabriel aches, he burns, he exists to every particle of his being in an exquisite and transcendent relief beyond all words, that all the jagged edges and empty places and unexpected walls and strange, cold, unbridgeable distances between him and the false Garcia have vanished without a trace. He fits everywhere, there is no estrangement, no need to push him away, and less than no desire. They cling to each other like a pair of drowning men, Garcia’s hands practically bending the bones of Gabriel’s arms, tangled up and rocking on the sun-warmed earth. Gabriel wants to die in this moment and never let it go.

At last, Garcia pulls back. “Are you all right?” he repeats. “Is everyone else – did you catch who did this? What they meant by it? Has there been an attack on the house, or some other villainy?”

“It is – ” Oh Christ, this is going to be a chore to explain. “It is a long story, and we – we’re still in danger, it’s not over. We’re going to have to be very careful about this, and perhaps it’s best if you don’t return to Sept-Tours just now.”

“What?” Garcia looks confused. “Why on earth not?”

Gabriel has not meant to say it. But he has never been able to refuse Garcia anything, and they are sitting here holding hands and weak with relief, and then together they can banish all of this. So the story spills out of him – the impostor, the witch, the nightmare of the past several months, London and Prague, Rittenhouse and Kelley, the terror and treachery of what he learned about Christian, and his plan to do something, anything, to forestall it. Garcia looks progressively more shocked and angry, until when Gabriel finally finishes, he swears at length in Ragusan for several entertaining minutes. “That bastard,” he says at last, evidently referring to his future self. “How could he – Christian’s dead? Papa’s dead? You and I hate each other, and he’s in love with a witch? How can this be what any of us _want?”_

“Exactly, my darling. Exactly.” Gabriel settles his head on Garcia’s shoulder, as Garcia puts an arm around him and _Christ,_ it is rightness, it is rest, it is ease. “I will not deny that it is some sort of you, but it would be unforgivable for both of us if we stood by and permitted you to become him. We could change this, could we not? We could save our son, and us, and our family, and our father. We could save it all.”

At that, he bites his tongue, as he has rarely referred to Christian as anything other than _his_ son, but Garcia himself does not seem to notice. “Aye,” he says. “Aye, we could not – we could not allow it, especially if they have been as evasive and treacherous as you say. We have to think of something, _moje srce._ Did you say they’re coming here? If we wait, if we play this carefully, if we let them expose themselves to the rest of the family – you said they had Papa fooled, that is unfortunate. But once we know what we’re doing, we can get this book and make the witch do whatever she must. Then it would be solved, I would never become him, they would never come here. It would all be over.”

Gabriel hesitates. This is exactly what he wants, and he has been entirely vindicated by hearing it from his Garcia’s own mouth, that this is never the future he would fight to protect or the person he would want to be. What else is he supposed to do, he who loves Garcia more than anyone on earth? He who cannot contemplate a world or a family held together without his father, or any interest in life without his son? He does not want to hurt the impostor, but even too are they doing him a favor. He is convinced that this is the only way, but once he winks gently out of existence, once he takes his pain and his loneliness and his betrayal with him, he will never know how poisoned his heart became. As for the witch – well, that may be more complicated. She will not take peaceably to losing the false Garcia, and Gabriel does not want to cause her unnecessary pain, even though she has caused him more than plenty. If she too does not evaporate on the spot, he will take her back to London. Give her over to the charge of Lady Beaton and the other witches, her own kind, her sisterhood. They will find a place for her, and keep her far from any vengeance she might design upon him or his family. As with Christian, it is what is best for Lucy.

Garcia is still looking at him. Waiting for an answer. In this, as ever, they must be one. And that is not a question. Not really. It never has been.

“Yes, my darling,” Gabriel says. Softly at first, and then again, without any trace of doubt or turning back. “Yes. We are going to do this.”


	19. Wedding Song

Lucy and Flynn arrive at Sept-Tours several days later than they planned. For one thing, there was a torrential rainstorm in Germany that left the entire countryside awash in foot-deep mud, and for the _other,_ there was the bandit attack in Burgundy that just had to happen the instant they stopped to sleep. That, of course, went spectacularly badly for the bandits, but there’s a tiny, guilty part of Lucy that can’t regret it happened. When she was a kid, she watched _Beauty and the Beast_ about eighty million times, imprinted to a formative degree on the brown-haired, book-loving Belle, and it was basically the scene where the Beast tears apart the pack of wolves in the woods, but with _her_ Beast.  Unfortunately, twenty men against one vampire are still going to get in a few good whacks, and it likewise left Flynn banged up, unable to continue at the same blazing speed as before, and pretty sure that one of them had a silver dagger, because there’s a wound in his shoulder that is still giving him trouble. Lucy is grateful that she didn’t have to haul his insensate carcass onto a horse and ride alone to the enchanted castle with the singing teapots, but it’s a delay and an inconvenience that they could manifestly have done without.

With that, and the fear that they have to get there and avert immediate calamity, they are half-expecting to see smoke rising from the horizon, the murdered bodies of the de Clermonts strewn on the road or staked up on trees, or a charred crater where Sept-Tours used to stand. Not that they themselves look much better; they’re fabulously filthy, haven’t washed or slept properly since they left Prague, and food has been thin on the ground. Flynn is limping, has a week’s worth of scruff (not as much for a vampire as it would be for a human, but increasing his resemblance to the Beast still more) and it’s entirely possible that the villagers of Sept-Tours will, just for that neat bit of irony, mistake them for intruders and chase them out with pitchforks. That might be a wise precaution on the villagers’ part. It’s sixteenth-century France, and the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was a short eighteen years ago, in 1572. The Edict of Nantes in 1598, with its promise of toleration, is almost a decade off, so the wars of religion are still very much a thing. In other words, nobody trusts their neighbors too far, and certainly not scruffy, dirty, dangerous-looking strangers. Never know when they might have to get around to the good old-fashioned business of killing you in the name of God.

Mercifully, they make it through the village without being butchered, and Lucy has to fight a feeling of the strongest unreality yet, finally understanding a bit of how utterly surreal this has been for Flynn all along. After all, she’s _been_ here. She _knows_ this place. She walked down to the village and used the internet at the café, she visited the library. Neither of those establishments are there now, but as they pass the little church with its bell tower and Flynn casts an odd, shadowed glance at it, it strikes Lucy that his human wife and daughter are buried there right now and already have been for a thousand years. That tower was the one he leapt from in his grief, those stones are where Maria made him into a vampire. Quietly, she reaches for his hand. “Do you want to visit them?”

Flynn looks down at her tenderly. He is sun-browned and shaggy and weathered, but his eyes are soft and sad. “I’d like to,” he admits. “But we don’t have time.”

Lucy nods, a silent promise that they can come back later if he wants, she won’t feel threatened or pushed out or implicitly challenged, the way she did when Maria brought her to see Lorena and Iris’s graves for the first time. God, Maria. They are about to reach Sept-Tours – a place Lucy likes, where she’s spent a significant amount of time in the present, which she more or less knows – and, presumably, be introduced yet again to Flynn’s family, a family that does not know her. It was a rough entry the first time, and the thought of once again having to win over Flynn’s formidable mother is intimidating. Maria doesn’t have her burning grudge against witches, still has her husband, alive and whole, but yet again, Lucy is a strange witch who turned up from nowhere, has an inexplicable connection with Maria’s middle son, and is being dropped into the family’s private business with no warning. If this is in the past, and thus technically before the other time, does it count as history repeating itself? Or was history repeating _then?_ This is so weird.

In a few more minutes, they labor up the road in sight of the tall gates that guard the de Clermonts’ ancestral seat, crowned with the lion and the wolf of the family sigil, and Flynn pushes them open. Lucy is fighting a stitch and wonders if she can just get him to carry her the last dozen yards, but since she’s come this far, she might as well finish it under her own steam, and he’s hurt too. She wants to properly care for those wounds, as well as get a chance to actually enjoy their engagement, which they have had no time to do for a variety of reasons. As well, she has the resources of the Sept-Tours library here, and anything else that they can do to brainstorm a plan to retrieve the rest of Ashmole 782, mix the manticore venom antidote, and get back to London before too much longer. They’re creeping up on the middle of August, they’re more than halfway over the time limit. She really hopes Asher is here. They’re going to need his help.

Unlike almost every other aristocratic estate, Sept-Tours does not keep hunting hounds, and so the air is silent of the barking that would otherwise accompany them up the drive. The place looks almost as Lucy remembers, though devoid of even the bare trappings of modernity it had then. Still seven towers, surrounded in a tall stone wall grown with ivy and cut with crenellations; it’s a working defensive fortification, not the aesthetic old semi-ruin of its present state. They drove up in a rental Jaguar last time, and while there are stables among the other outbuildings, there isn’t a carriage house. Like the New Lodge in Essex, the place is beautiful, clearly wealthy, and well-kept, but there are small hints, jarring irregularities here and there, to underscore the point that its inhabitants are not human. Lucy still isn’t sure that she’d be brave enough to visit without Flynn. Definitely not in this century, at least.

They come to a halt in the courtyard, gazing up at the house. Neither of them seem inclined to be the first to shout up at it (Lucy definitely isn’t) and Flynn prowls around, checking for signs of forced entry. If someone is at home, they are probably well aware that there are visitors, and Lucy wonders if Flynn smells different – he’s himself, but four hundred-odd years older, and has been fraternizing with her. If he’s unfamiliar, if he’s a threat, will they –

Just then, as she is really in danger of twisting herself into knots with anxiety, the front door opens. Both of them snap to attention, not sure who is about to appear, but Asher de Clermont, tall and elegant and handsome as ever, steps outside and surveys them up and down, one dark eyebrow cocked at their disreputable appearance. “I have been wondering where you were. Though from the sight of you, I judge that the journey was not – ”

Whatever else he was going to say is cut off as Flynn takes two steps and hugs his father hard, clearly overcome by the image of seeing him here, perfectly alive and well, in the family home. Lucy knows that the last memory Flynn otherwise has of him here is of the de Clermonts bringing Asher’s mangled body home after they reached him in the Nazi bunker where he was held prisoner, but too late; he was already dead, they never had a proper goodbye, only the aching, pounding, howling abyss where the pillar of their world used to be. Flynn’s voice is none too steady as he says, “Papa.”

“Garcia.” Asher touches his son’s dirty, scruffy cheek. “You look dismal.”

Flynn snorts a weak laugh, as Asher pulls him close, kisses his forehead – leaving him surprised, as Asher clearly is not otherwise one for such spontaneous gestures of affection – then lets him go and strides over to Lucy. “You, on the other hand,” he says, “look lovely as ever, though somewhat the worse for wear. I suppose you will have met my wife at some other point, but not here. Or my youngest son, William?”

“I – know them, yes,” Lucy says. “Just, as you say, not – not here.”

“Ah.” Asher nods. “Well, Garcia, your rooms have been waiting for you, and I suspect both of you would prefer to polish up before seeing the others. Your mother has gone to the Assumption Day fair with Cecilia, so you have a few hours. That, or – ”

“Papa.” Flynn has stalled at the threshold of the house. “Where – where is Gabriel? Is he here? Chris – Christian?”

Asher pauses. Then he says, “Yes, they are here. They arrived a day or so before I did myself. They and William went to the fair as well, and I said that I would stay behind and keep watch for you. So as for now, it is just me.”

“Is he…” Flynn hesitates even longer. “Is he angry? He’s – has he said anything to you about this plan of sailing off to the New World, or – or why?”

“He has said some things, yes.” Asher’s voice is neutral, though his expression hints that he has not thought much of them. “I have been waiting for you to arrive, and to give you both the chance to tell your side of the story. I must say, I will be grieved if the accord you reached in London before me has so swiftly come undone again. You will – ” He stops, and Lucy can see the shadows on his face, that lurk in his clear grey eyes, the demons that must never have entirely ceased their whispering about the fate that awaits him, and what it will do to his family when he is gone. “You will need it,” Asher finishes, steadily as ever. “You will need each other. Please, the pair of you, remember that.”

Flynn looks briefly as if he’s actually not the one who’s having a hard time with that concept right now, but nods. Having been assured that the house is presently a Gabriel-free zone and he does not need to fear an unpleasant surprise encounter from around a corner, he ventures in. Lucy, after an awkward nod to Asher, follows him.

Her first sight is even stranger. When she was here in the twenty-first century, it was lovely, the picture of a French country house, and deeply medieval in character, more like a museum than anything else. It was shut up, shut off, a sterile monument to its mistress’s grief, a place that all the de Clermont sons – Gabriel to Paris, Flynn to Oxford, Wyatt to Venice – had fled for important, high-profile careers to throw themselves into, since none of them could bear to return. This is – it’s _alive._ Asher lives here, so do the boys (at least intermittently) and even the light seems different, warm and golden rather than pale and washed-out. The entire energy is changed, something that Lucy can feel in her magic on a molecular level, an openness and a power that Sept-Tours never had when she knew it, not after its family was torn apart and the shroud of grief fell so thickly that it was never lifted again. She stops short, as if to be sure that it’s the same place, and the impact has clearly hit Flynn in the chest too. “God,” he says hoarsely. “I forgot it used to be like this.”

“I can imagine.” Lucy shakes her head. “This – this is bizarre enough for me.”

Flynn nods, as if not entirely trusting himself to words, and crosses the hall, opening the door into his tower, which at least is where Lucy remembers it. The last time, she slept in the guest room, but this time, she follows Flynn past that door and up to the top floor, into the master bedchamber. It was mostly empty then, stripped of anything recognizably belonging to Flynn since he had sent it all to his house in Woodstock, but once more, the contrast is jarring. It’s lived-in, strewn with clothes and possessions, the bed hung with thick red velvet curtains, and Lucy eyes it lustfully. She’s almost more interested in it alone than anything they could theoretically do in it, but first things first. They really do reek.

There are several pitchers of water waiting for them, along with a copper tub, and they strip down and step into it together, giggling as they pick up the water to dump over each other’s heads. It’s probably a mark of a solid relationship when you can see each other looking like pigs, play and splash a little while making your tall and formidable vampire fiancé look like a wet badger, and otherwise get the chance to be properly naked. Lucy loses her footing on the tub bottom, slips and shrieks, but before she can fall, Flynn swoops in to catch her around the waist, pulling her up against him. “You,” he says in her ear, low and rumbling in his chest, “look _very_ distracting right now.”

“Your standards must be low,” Lucy points out. “Though, for that matter, so do you.”

“Then your standards are too,” he shoots back, nipping at her earlobe and following it up by bundling her into a fierce, very solid, quite damp, and only slightly smelly kiss. Lucy wraps both arms around his neck, opening her mouth, and her feet dangle a hearty six inches in the air as he effortlessly lifts her off them. Gooseflesh rises on her bare skin, and her soft sounds of pleasure quickly turn into needy little whimpers as he ravishes her thoroughly with tongue and teeth, the slightest hint of fang, until their mouths are raw and wet and well-marked. “Jesus,” Flynn says. “I’d have you on your back right now if I wasn’t so afraid of falling asleep halfway through.”

“Old man,” Lucy breathes, even though she too is elderly (if obviously not nearly as much as him) and both of them need to recover from the journey. She traces her fingers around the ugly weal in his shoulder left by the silver blade, sparking it with magic, and he groans in relief as the proud flesh knits. Her cheek against his, his hand in her matted wet hair, curled around the nape of her neck, she says, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Flynn shifts her, lifting her further so she can get her legs around his waist, and they stand there together, dripping in the warm water, dust motes floating around them in the golden light like the sand of an enchanted hourglass. “Since the damn place hasn’t burned down yet, maybe I can start to make up for everything I’ve put you through, huh? We still have everything else to deal with while we’re at it, but I thought I’d offer.”

Lucy turns her head and kisses him again, can feel him straining at her, hard and slick and hungry for engulfment, and nobody said that they couldn’t get just a _little_ started now. She slides down and spreads her knees, and it is her turn to groan as he slides into her, pushing her apart with a pleasant burn and stretch, filling her solidly and seating to the hilt. His hands brace under her ass, and hers close on his hips. They’re giddy with exhaustion and weary love and the relief of finding Sept-Tours intact, even if they will have to put on their pants (literally) and go sort it out. Flynn thrusts at a considered, dreamy pace, Lucy still with her legs wrapped around his waist and letting him hold her up. She nibbles at the side of his neck, and is rewarded with the black flash of his eyes. “Don’t go teasing me like that now, witch.”

“Maybe you should bite more often then, vampire. Or – _oh_ my god.” Lucy briefly loses her train of thought as he hits a particularly sweet spot inside her. He steps out of the tub, carries her to the bed while never breaking possession, and pushes her down on her back as promised, their wet bodies leaving damp ghosts on the sheets. Flynn’s muscles coil and uncoil, bunching in long, lithe strokes, as their pace gets faster and more ragged and Flynn grabs her leg, pushing her knee alongside his hip to deepen the angle of his penetration. Lucy hooks the other one around his back, they roll over, and she can sense him reaching the edge of his self-control, the mental and physical block he has imposed whenever they make love, making sure that he doesn’t go too far and lose himself completely. They’re both exhausted, it’s not the time to push past it, but she is closer to it than she has ever been, and the idea of finally having a chance to properly transgress it turns her on even more. With a few more wracking, writhing thrusts, both of them gasping and sighing and swearing (and Lucy hopes that Asher is not in range of supernatural overhearing), it’s done, as they melt and burn into the sweet, rutting, glowing release of climax. Flynn falls half on top of her, dark head on her shoulder, as Lucy feels a wave of great and deep contentment spread through her. They lie together in silence except for her heavy breathing, and the way Flynn’s shoulders and chest shudder in a ghost of the same.

At last, with a groan of regret, Flynn pushes back, pulling out of her, and regards them ruefully. “Do we need another wash now anyway?”

There’s still a little water left, so they rinse off the stickiest bits, scrub with the cake of rosemary soap, and comb a small vial of lavender tincture through Lucy’s hair. Once that is done, they’re cleaner than they have been in weeks, and step out together, as Flynn takes the towel off the chair and wraps it around her. “We’ll have to find you clothes suitable for a lady of the family,” he says. “The only woman of that rank living here right now is my mother, and I’m fairly sure you don’t want to meet her this time while dressed in her own things that you borrowed without asking.”

“No, not really.” Lucy sits down, enjoying the sun warming her dewy skin and damp hair, as he scouts around for a solution. “Should we ask your father?”

“Might have to.” Flynn finds a second towel, rubs himself down vigorously (Lucy admires the spectacle) and digs up his bowl, strop, and straight razor, grooming the scruff off while squinting in intent concentration into a small, ashy mirror. Most looking glasses in this era are backed with silver, which is the reason why vampires would not see their reflection in them, but you can imaginatively loophole it if you find one made with pewter or lime-glass instead. Lucy reflects in a sort of pleasant haze that she’s learning all kinds of things about supernatural life hacks. Maybe someone should start a blog.

Once he has made himself presentable and changed into his own clothes, Flynn vanishes to ask Asher about borrowing some of Maria’s wardrobe, and Lucy dries off and brushes her hair. As far as she can tell, she still looks like herself. She is thin and hard and brown as a stick, she would like to shave her legs and armpits, there are several new scars and scratches and other tokens of the sixteenth century’s esteem, and her toenails could probably kill a man, but given everything that she has been through, and doubtless will have to face before she gets home, it’s comforting to know that she’s still _her._ It’s good to be in Sept-Tours again. It feels safe. Lucy knows that it’s not, that this could just be a comforting illusion with Rittenhouse and/or Temple awaiting the opportune moment, but she’s been under so much stress that the sense of familiarity and security and comfort is sorely needed.

She dozes off in the sun, daydreams turning into real dreams, and is startled awake when Flynn returns, carrying some of Maria’s clothes and a spare pair of underthings (Lucy does hope that Maria won’t mind). They’re close to the same size, so it fits, though she can’t help feeling like an interloper. The fabric is rich and beautiful and old, the gown something like seventy years out of current fashion, but when you’re a vampire matriarch, you can dress however the hell you want and everyone else can follow you. It swirls attractively around Lucy’s legs, and to make her feel even more like Belle, the underskirt is gold, the overlay blue. “How do I look?” she asks, when she has pinned up her hair and fastened a pearl on a velvet ribbon around her neck. “Might not strike anyone blind?”

“Only by your beauty,” Flynn assures her solemnly, which is a very sweet if somewhat corny thing to say, but bless him, he pulls it off. “Come on, let’s go talk to Papa.”

They descend the tower into the main house, then continue through it to a place Lucy has definitely never been – up the steps into Maria and Asher’s tower, to the door of Asher’s study. Flynn knocks, waits for his father to answer, then pushes it ajar, as Asher turns to face them. He is seated at his writing desk among a chaos of papers and books and letters, and regards their scrubbed and sartorially upgraded state with approval. “That dress suits you, my lady. If you are here for some time, we will see about acquiring your own wardrobe, but I hope it is not too much of a discourtesy to borrow my wife’s.”

“Er, no, not at all. Your wife is an amazing woman, she – ” Lucy stops. “When I know her, that is. I’m sure she’s the same now.”

Asher nods, his eyes flicking to the de Clermont signet ring that Lucy wears on her little finger, the one Maria gave her and by which Asher knew that he himself was no longer alive in the present. The moment hangs silently, poignantly, and then Asher clears his throat, rummaging on the desk and beckoning them to come closer. “I had these done in London,” he says, holding something out in both hands. “Do you think they are an accurate likeness?”

Lucy bends over to examine it, and is surprised to see that the items are two portrait miniatures of her and Flynn, done in the court painting style that Holbein made popular, enclosed in small gilt frames. The likeness is in fact remarkable, and she wonders how any artist was able to achieve such an effect without the subjects there to sit in their studio; it’s not like they have photographs or other materials to work from. Apparently sensing her question, Asher says, “I made sketches of the pair of you. I was not sure I had entirely grasped you, my lady, but it seems that it was not altogether terrible.”

“No, it’s – it’s very good.” Lucy examines her serenely smiling miniature self, the very image of a late Tudor lady of means. “What are they for? Just – what, souvenirs?”

“You are welcome to view them that way,” Asher says, “though truly, I had another purpose in their devising. It has occurred to me that we could have need to send messages ahead in time, as a result of what the two of you are doing here, what changes you may have or may yet make. I would do so, if I could be assured of being there at the other end, but – ” He breaks off. “Well, the method must need therefore outlive me too.”

“Anyone who saw them and knew us would recognize us, yes,” Lucy admits. “But how could you be certain that it would work? Do they mean something?”

“I cannot be sure, of course,” Asher says. “But it would serve as proof at least that you had been here, and that you had met me, and I had believed that you were who you said. There is a message enclosed in each, you will see if you remove the frames.”

Lucy and Flynn glance at each other, then take their respective portraits, undoing the catches on the back and pulling out the small note folded up inside. Both messages are identical, written by Asher to commend his son Lord Garcia de Clermont and his wife Lady Lucy to the esteem of the bearer, the parchment new and the ink fresh and black. He has drawn the sigil of the Knights of Lazarus on the bottom, charged the recipient to do so as well by their authority, so it seems plain that he is expecting it to eventually pass into the hands of another supernatural – another vampire, even, since the Knights are a secret to other creatures. Maybe one of his own family, the painful knowledge that if they ever read this, he himself will not be there to explain instead. Lucy looks up at him, swallowing hard. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.” Asher nods again. “I am not yet sure where they might need to go, but I suppose time will answer some questions for us. They are yours, so keep them. No matter what becomes of Sept-Tours, or indeed of me, they will go on.”

Lucy nods, and Flynn tucks the miniatures into his pocket. Then Asher tilts his head at the chair across the way, almost buried under its load of books. “Sit down and tell me what has happened.”

Flynn goes over, clears them off, and sits down, as Lucy finds a more or less clear spot to perch atop a trunk. Flynn starts and then stops, unable to go it all over again, the half-healed wounds, the depths of grief and anger and betrayal. Finally he gets started, galloping like a runaway cart horse, talking over himself, jumbled and breathless. This time, he cannot hold back from his father the cold, galling, terrible truth of what happens to Christian. This time, in a whisper, unable to meet his eyes, he has to tell him.

Asher looks like he’s been stabbed. He leans back in his chair, putting both hands over his face, as even he cannot receive such news completely unmoved. Flynn looks terrified, as if Asher’s next move will be to instantly turn on him the way Gabriel did, to snatch back any support or care or paternal love, any chance of figuring this out together, any absolution for a crime that may not be his, but that he still feels as permanently as if it was. Asher lets out a small, soft sigh of agony that is worse than a sob, the breath of an unspeakable pain, until at last he puts his hands down and looks over at them. “When did you – when did you say this was, again?”

“1762.” Flynn manages it more or less evenly, though his face is dead white, and Lucy silently takes his hand. “A hundred and seventy-two years from now.”

“And when do I – ” Asher breaks off from a question that no one should have to ask anyone, much less their own son, but Lucy can see him struggling with it nonetheless. “Is it… you said it was after 1912. Later?”

“Yes.” Flynn closes his eyes. “Later than that. But not much.”

The silence hangs as heavy as anything Lucy has ever heard or felt. A muscle works in Asher’s cheek, his hands opening and closing, as if even this courteous, gracious, powerful, wise, restrained, reasoned old vampire is on the brink of rushing out and doing something as catastrophically stupid as any of his sons. Then he says abruptly, “Do I die well, at least?”

“You die a hero.” Flynn squeezes Lucy’s hand until it hurts. “You die instead of agreeing to turn a terrible villain into a vampire, of ever agreeing to anything that they wanted you to do. We don’t… we don’t find you in time to say goodbye. There was a note in your pocket, we found it when we brought your body back, explaining what happened and why you had to hold out until the end, apologizing for what you knew we would see when we found you. That’s the last memory I have of you here.”

Asher gets up convulsively, crosses the study, and kneels before his son, as Flynn lets go of Lucy, reaches out and the two of them grasp each other’s hands desperately hard, as if by love and stubbornness alone they can forestall this fate. “And a grave? Do I have that?”

“We thought of putting you in the village church, with my – with my girls.” Flynn closes his eyes again. “I don’t think _Maman_ could bear the idea, though. She would have – she would have gone and lain down upon it, and never gotten up again. We had you cremated, and scattered to the wind. But this house is your grave, Papa. This house is – it barely changed, it turned into a cold museum, a dusty tomb. Of everything we were, and could never be again.”

Asher utters that same unspeakable, breathless noise of agony at the mention of Maria, looks as if he is barely able to keep his composure at the thought. He rocks back and forth, rubs the heels of his hands across the traitorous tears that threaten to fall, shaking his head, barely processing. “Christ,” he says at last, hoarsely. “Christ.”

“I’m sorry.” Flynn looks up at him. “Papa, I’m sorry, I – ”

“No.” Asher reaches down and pulls Flynn off his feet into a rough embrace, curling his hand around Flynn’s head, holding him against his shoulder like a parent rocking a newborn baby. “No, no, no, Garcia, _mon fils, mon coeur,_ no. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

Flynn exhales a racking gasp, a shudder racing through him as if he is really about to break down and sob, but he doesn’t. Asher kisses his cheek, holding him so tightly that Flynn would not be able to breathe if he was a human, but that, fortunately, is incidental. Lucy’s own eyes burn with tears, she half-feels as if she shouldn’t be here to witness this, but neither father nor son seem to mind that she is. It is a very long moment until Asher lets Flynn go, their faces shining with tears, sniffing and laughing and sobbing, an absolution granted for a grief that nonetheless is still to come, and still brutally unbearable. “I love you,” Asher says. “I have loved you from the day your mother made you, and I saw you and knew you for my very own. It is my blood in your veins as well, my soul, my heart, and it always was. Never doubt that. Never.”

“I…” Flynn tries to answer, finds nothing whatsoever to say, and hugs his father again, huffing and harrumphing. “I love you, Papa,” he manages, strangled. “I love you so much. I’ll – I could change it. I could still find a way to save you.”

“Now that,” Asher says decisively, “is, as I believe I have said before, the one thing you must not do, at least on my behalf alone. I will not have you risking yourselves and your lives for me, especially if my end is as violent as you imply. I absolutely forbid it. Do you hear me?”

Flynn hesitates, but promises that he does, even if Lucy cannot be entirely sure that he means it. Since Asher is looking at her, she does the same, and the three of them stand there in silence. Then Asher clears his throat. “You must be very hungry, Lucy,” he says. “Come, we will find you something in the way of food.”

Still somewhat shaken, but also indeed very hungry, Lucy trails after him down the stairs, Flynn on her heels, and into the dining room. Since Harry Houdini is a few centuries away from joining the family, they don’t have the need to feed humans regularly, but Asher manages to scrape up some bread, cheese, grapes, and other such French-vineyard food. Lucy tries not to eat too wolfishly, as Flynn and Asher sit at the table to keep her company. Taking note of his son’s still-visible grab bag of injuries, Asher frowns. “Misadventure on the road?”

“Bandit attack,” Flynn says. “Not far from Dijon. It’ll keep, but – ”

Asher shakes his head, and unfastens his collar. “No,” he says, with a clear implication that while he is still alive and able to care for his son, that is damn well what he is going to do. “Come here.”

Flynn pauses, then moves over to accept the offer. He feeds in silence as Asher closes his eyes and looks meditative, and Lucy wishes yet again that she could give them, give all of them, more time. Asher said in Essex that they have had far more of it, more of any blessing than any other human could possibly aspire to, that the world should not be set out of balance just to wring out a few greedy drops more, and so far as it goes, that is true. But the world has _been_ out of balance so long, at least for them, and as they are sitting here in Sept-Tours as it used to be, the family (almost) as it was, Lucy cannot help but want.

They finish their respective meals soon thereafter, as Asher says that he has work to return to, but invites them to make themselves at home and have the run of the library, the grounds, or wherever else they wish to spend the afternoon. They head to the former, Ashmole 782 pages in tow, as Lucy glances around. “Wow,” she says. “Just like old times. Literally.”

“Indeed.” Flynn clears off the table beneath the window with the best light. “We might as well get started. If you turn the manuscript back on again, insert the missing pages, it should reactivate with the real magic, shouldn’t it?”

“Theoretically.” Lucy has a brief qualm at doing so, while Rittenhouse could very much be prowling around nearby, but reminds herself that if they are safe anywhere, it is at Sept-Tours, and certainly safer than they were in Prague. In the aftermath of bath, sex, nap, and food, she is fighting the urge to yawn until her jaw cracks, and isn’t sure that her fuzzy brain is up to the task of anything too genius, but like with jetlag, it’s probably best to power through it as long as you can. “Well, here we go?”

She removes the pages, including the one with the now-mostly-restored alchemical wedding, and glances down at it. Their faces haven’t yet reappeared, still vandalized by those dark slashes, and Lucy tells herself not to read too much into it. She places them where she did before, and once again the manuscript lights up, the letters scurrying to new places, shimmering and pulsing with barely restrained power. She sets out the folios and – occasionally asking Flynn about a reference or for a sight-translation of a language that she doesn’t know – gets down to business. The Huns aren’t going to defeat themselves.

An hour and change of painstaking deciphering, giving her war flashbacks to her MA Introduction to Paleography courses, doesn’t get her very far. But then Lucy turns the page, and spots something that she instantly recognizes as a discussion of the one and only Philosopher’s Stone. She is about to make a joke about paging Nicolas Flamel, until it hits her that if he was a timewalker or knew one, he could very much have helped write this particular section. Naturally, the last page of the instructions is missing, must be in the part of the manuscript that Rittenhouse has, and whipping up a quick batch of the Elixir of Life isn’t something you want to improvise. But it is _mostly_ there, and Lucy’s breath catches in her throat. _Somethynge for What Ailes You,_ the heading reads. Indeed.

“Garcia.” Her voice sounds high, breathless, and he turns sharply. “Look.”

Flynn moves to read over her shoulder, and Lucy trails her finger carefully down the list of ingredients. They’re mostly available – gemstones, chemical elements, dead animal parts, the kind of thing that a sixteenth-century mad scientist would either have on hand or could buy at the nearest apothecary. The art lies in combining them correctly, in progressing them through the four stages and colors of the Great Work: nigredo, albedo, citrinitas, and rubedo. The base matter, the ordinary item with which one starts before it is mystically transmogrified, is described as a white stone, _calculus albus._ If all the elements are applied in correct order, while the appropriate incantations are spoken and the process is performed without a single error, it becomes red, charged with great power. As ever, the quintessence of alchemy. White and red. Queen and king. One state of being performs and perfects another.

Lucy glances up at Flynn, and the two of them regard the page in silence. Finally he says, “We can probably get the rest of it, but what about the white stone?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy wonders if just any old pale pebble will do, but probably not. “But if we actually make the Philosopher’s Stone, apart from being cool, that would heal Gabriel, wouldn’t it? Our Gabriel. It would have to.”

Flynn’s mouth goes grim, and he doesn’t answer for a few moments. Then he says, “Yes. The whole point was that manticore venom doesn’t have any single or modern or ordinary antidote, that it needs an extraordinary remedy. The Elixir of Life would absolutely cure that. It wouldn’t make him immortal unless he kept drinking it, but he’s immortal anyway, that doesn’t matter.”

“We could figure this out,” Lucy says. “Couldn’t we?”

“Probably.” Again, Flynn seems to be weighing his words. “So we are – we are still doing this, I mean? Saving him?”

“I thought so.” Lucy glances at him, taken aback. “Do you not want to?”

“Of course I want to!” Flynn says it vehemently, as if he still, even now, can’t think of anything but. “I would make the damn thing myself if I could! I just… I don’t know. After everything… for whatever reason, our Gabriel doesn’t have his memories of what went on here. Maybe you erased them, maybe someone else did, we don’t know why. If we got back to the present, and we did save him, we would – at some point – have to restore those memories. Even if Gabriel did want to make things up with me before he was poisoned, if he remembered everything that went on here, what we did, what we…” Flynn trails off. “Maybe he only forgave me at all, even after two hundred and fifty years, because he forgot.”

Lucy feels a small, unpleasant shock, since she hadn’t thought of that. Still, it’s not really germane to the current problem. One thing at a time, and deal with the rest later. “Should we ask your father if he can find a _calculus albus_ for us, or knows what it is?”

“That’s a good first step, yes.” Flynn shakes his head, as if trying to focus. “Do you think it could be a bezoar? That’s another kind of white stone known for curing poison, obviously, and it’s as likely a place to start as any.”

Lucy concurs that this seems likely, and they work for the rest of the afternoon, transcribing down anything else that might be useful, constantly thwarted from any more of a major breakthrough by the incompleteness of the pages. They can only hope that this frustrating dropped-jigsaw-puzzle nature of the manuscript means that Rittenhouse has been similarly barred, or that he doesn’t have the missing pages needed to unlock its full power, but the original copies of those pages could be in his section. They can’t count on him just not knowing, and by the time dusk is falling, Lucy can no longer see straight and is drowsing on her feet. “I think that’s enough for now.”

Flynn takes a look at her, agrees, and they disconnect the pages, unplugging the magic and returning Ashmole 782 to its more innocuous state. They can hear voices through the library door, and exchange a look, then go out.

Maria, Gabriel, Christian, Cecilia, and Wyatt – no, Lucy reminds herself, his name will be William here – are just returning from the fair when they emerge. Then there is the sound of footsteps on the stairs and Asher appears, as if sensing that his supervisory capacities might be called for. At the sight of Maria, sternly shooing her children around and putting down her basket and hanging up her cloak, his face goes strange, soft with love, looking at her as if he must remember to make every moment count. Then he smiles, descends into the throng, and wraps an arm around her waist, turning her around to kiss her. “Was it a good day, my love?”

Maria kisses him back quickly, the sort of routine done a thousand times between a happily and long-married couple, thinking no more of it. “Aye, we made the most of it. Though perhaps if you had come too, we would have – ”

At that moment, over her husband’s shoulder, Maria catches sight of Flynn and Lucy, and the chatter in the hall abruptly goes quiet. Gabriel is the next to see them, and a very odd look crosses his face. Not angry, exactly, which is better than Lucy was hoping for, but… furtive, calculating, and she’s not sure why, but she doesn’t like it. He opens his mouth, starts to say something, and stops. Then he smiles. “Ah. Garcia.”

“Aunt Lucy!” Christian, absolutely beaming, clatters past his father and throws himself into Lucy’s arms. Since he’s half a foot taller than her, this makes her utter an _oof_ and stagger backward, but she hugs him back, once more choked up. “You’re here!”

“Yes, we took a little longer than we planned, but we made it.” Flynn is eyeing his mother very carefully, clearly unsure what, if anything, she has heard about his altered state and his witch plus-one. “We arrived late this morning. Luckily Papa was here to greet us.”

Maria’s mouth is open, but she, never one to be off her footing for long, smartly shuts it. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, we had heard you would be… arriving.”

“Grand-mère, this is Aunt Lucy.” Christian lets go of Lucy and eagerly pushes her forward like a show dog for the Westminster Kennel Club’s approval. “Is she not lovely?”

Maria de Clermont studies Lucy from head to toe, lips pursed. She is just as beautiful and terrifying as ever, though in a way much softer, without that diamond-sharp edge of pain and loss that sheened her in the present. Maria takes her time in answering. Then she says curtly, “That is my dress.”

“I told her that she could borrow it, my love,” Asher says. “There were few other options unless we wished to dress her in one of Cecilia’s habits.”

Thus summoned by the lord of the house, the de Clermonts’ amanuensis and general Girl Friday sweeps forward. She is indeed dressed like a medieval nun, though she has unpinned her wimple, and her grey-gold hair falls loose in elegant curls around her statuesquely beautiful face. “Good evening,” she says, in Old French; apparently, if Lucy should happen not to speak it, sucks to be her. “You will be Garcia’s wife. I am Cecilia.”

Lucy barely stops herself from blurting out, “I know.” Cecilia met her on her first trip to Sept-Tours, took charge of her and handled the logistics while Maria (and then Gabriel) were having it out with Flynn. Fighting the urge to curtsy, since that would not be done by a lady higher in rank to a servant, no matter how nobly born, she nods back and answers in kind. “Ah – yes. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Cecilia arches one perfect eyebrow in note of her not-completely-disappointing language skills. “We were not certain what to expect, from the stories we have heard. Though you do lack horns and a tail, so I will say that is a start. Have you fed her, my lord?”

“Of course.” Asher raises an eyebrow in return, as if to say that _he_ is not the savage here. “Though it has been since midday, so perhaps she would not mind a more proper supper.”

Lucy isn’t sure that she wouldn’t prefer just to go upstairs and crash, as the prospect of a nice family dinner (of whatever sort) with the de Clermonts cannot fail to be nerve-wracking, but she understands that there are appearances to satisfy and tests to pass, and to judge from Cecilia’s comment, they’ve already heard a few things of a less-than-flattering nature. She then finds herself in the equally strange position of being introduced to William, has to restrain from calling him Wyatt, and joins the migration in the direction of the dining room. She, obviously, has never seen them all here together, with the notable exception of Jiya. It’s still three hundred years until she joins the family, and as Flynn glances around, Lucy can tell that he’s thinking the same thing, that he’s missing his daughter and wishing she could somehow see this, that she could be here. The vampires accept a glass of wine apiece and sit down at the table, and so Lucy isn’t the only one awkwardly eating human food, Christian stoutly volunteers for the job of chowing down with her. Cecilia gives him a look as if this is truly a terrible burden, but withdraws to prepare their meal, and Lucy finds herself the communal point of attention for six tall and beautiful immortals. (Maria isn’t tall, technically, but it _feels_ like she is.)

Lucy coughs, wondering if there is something on her face, as the silence turns loud. She’s here with Flynn, Asher knows and likes her, and so does Christian, but the other half of the table either doesn’t know her or to say the least, has complicated feelings. Gabriel is rather pointedly absorbed in playing with his napkin, avoiding Lucy’s eyes, and that does not quite dispel her lurking misgivings. At last, Asher says, “So, now that we are all gathered together. Was there something that any of you wished to say to the others?”

“I think I have said my piece, Papa, truly?” Gabriel takes a drink of his wine – or that is, another. Everyone else has had only a genteel sip or two, but his is half gone. “Rather, I feel it more pressing to hear from the newcomers. Or we ought to establish whether we are all to know why exactly, or that is to say _how,_ they are newcomers?”

Asher throws a warning look at his eldest son. “I see you’re still in a cheery humor.”

“The life of the party, as ever.” Gabriel takes another sip. “But no, let me officially welcome my brother and his wife to Sept-Tours. A toast?”

After a pause, the de Clermonts obligingly raise their goblets in Flynn and Lucy’s direction, and drink. Flynn and Lucy themselves exchange a look. They were thinking about maybe breaking the engagement news, but now it’s hard to explain why they aren’t already married, and Lucy isn’t sure how that would go anyway. Flynn himself is regarding Gabriel with narrow suspicion. “Last time we saw you, you were shouting about running off to the New World, and now what? Toasts to our health and happiness?”

“Perhaps I have had a change of heart.” Gabriel smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Besides, Papa and _Maman_ have made their disapproval of that idea quite clear, and I am willing to discuss alternatives. No trouble on the journey from Prague, I trust?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Flynn speaks carefully, too politely. “Where’s Jack?”

“The urchin is with my valet, a few days behind.” Gabriel likewise answers in that neutral, offhand voice. Flynn might be someone he is asking to do his taxes. “They rode in the carriage, whereas Christian and I elected for a spot of brisk exercise. We thought you might have crossed paths with them on the way, but it seems that you also traveled in haste. Did you bring the book with you? The magical one?”

“We. . .” Lucy glances at the others. This is Flynn’s family, and no matter how estranged they are in the present, that is not yet the case. “We did bring what we have of it, but we were worried that someone – that there might be some kind of attack. Have any of you seen an unfamiliar man, maybe acting strangely, anything or anyone else odd or deranged?”

At that, William snorts. “What?” he says under his breath. “Apart from Gabriel?”

Christian giggles, clearly still not above enjoying jabs at his father’s expense, but quickly looks solemn, though he and his uncle exchange a muffled grin. Gabriel, for his part, affects not to notice either his brother’s crack or his son’s reaction. “If you mean David Rittenhouse, my dear sis, I have informed them of the risk. We have seen no such person.”

“That’s – that’s good.” Obviously, Lucy didn’t _want_ to come here and find him lying in wait, but it has not escaped her that now they do in fact have all the de Clermonts in one place, the exact scenario that their enemies could most profitably exploit. Maybe Gabriel will decide that this is enough family disapproval for his taste and leave tomorrow morning, though that would cause its own problems. She’s momentarily glad of the distraction as Cecilia returns with supper, setting the plates down before her and Christian. After grace has been said, Christian starts to eat, as if to signal to Lucy that she can do the same, and she shoots her nephew a deeply grateful look. At some point, they need to talk. He doesn’t need to know the full gory details, but he deserves a measure of the truth, and Lucy is increasingly sure that she is the only person it is going to come from.

They manage to get through the meal, if that’s what it is, as Gabriel enquires casually if tomorrow, Lucy will do the honor of showing him what they are working on in the library. Lucy frowns, but agrees, and Gabriel nods and gets to his feet. “Do excuse me, _Maman,_ Papa. I have someone to visit in the village, I may not be home before morning. Ta, then?”

With that, not waiting for an answer – well, he’s a grownup, he doesn’t need his parents’ permission – Gabriel strides out. Lucy frowns after him, then as the others are also leaving the table, catches Christian by the sleeve. “Who would Gabriel have to visit in the village?”

“I’ve no idea?” Christian looks stumped. “Some lover, I presume. That’s usually the case with Papa. I’m sorry he’s acting like such a nincompoop, truly. I’ll try to get to the bottom of this, but when he’s in this sort of temper, best just stay out of the way until it runs its course. Have you settled into Sept-Tours? Do you need anything else?”

 “I’m fine.” Lucy smiles at him. “Really. And you’ve done enough.”

Christian, not without one more promise that he will personally throttle Gabriel if necessary, departs, and Lucy and Flynn climb the stairs to their own tower, both of them now fighting the swift onset of paramount oblivion. As they’re climbing into bed, Lucy says quietly, “I think Gabriel might be up to something.”

“Do you think it’s up to jumping in a lake?” Clearly, the last thing Flynn wants, quite understandably, is any more tussles with Gabriel in any shape or form. “I suppose we’re just lucky he hasn’t started any more major incidents. Come on, _moja ljubav,_ I don’t want to think about him. Settle here and lie down with me, mmm?”

Lucy does so, nestling into his arms as he pulls her close and they curl up together, shutting the curtains and floating in their own private world. This is his home, this is his – is _their_ – bed, and they even have an idea of what they might do next. There’s the next mountain to climb, there always is, but at least they will do it together. And so, content, secure in that knowledge, here with him, she sleeps.

They wake up rather late the next morning, and since they are here and the light is golden and they are quite flirty and sleepy and giggly, they enjoy another slow, leisurely round of sex. Lucy feels as if all the tension that has permanently inhabited her muscles for months, the stress and concern and anger and overwork, suspicion and exhaustion and fear, the negative emotions that have been burdened on her shoulders and feeding like a succubus, are finally starting to drain out of her, and as they are tangled together afterward, she murmurs, “Should we at least tell your father about the engagement, even if nobody else? He already knows the rest of it, and I – well, if you wanted his blessing…?”

Flynn considers that, plants a kiss between her breasts, and runs one hand along her hip, making her gasp as he ventures into the still-sensitive slickness between her legs. “Mmm,” he says, though she knows he must want it more than anything. “And he would not tell anyone else if we asked him not to, but I…. just that it doesn’t – I want – I just wish everything else wasn’t such a disaster.”

“I know.” Lucy arches her back, uttering an involuntary hiss, as a finger goes exploring delicately inside her. “But you deserve this, Garcia, all right? You deserve to tell him and for him to hear it, and for him to know. He loves you and he doesn’t blame you and you don’t need to hold yourself back from being happy in case something else bad happens. In fact, at the rate that bad things _do_ happen, we need to hold onto the good parts as much as we can.”

“Ah. Yes.” Flynn gives her a rueful, crooked smile, acknowledging that she has accurately guessed the nature of his hesitation. “You’re right, sweetheart. I said the other night that I wasn’t going to be afraid, and I should stand by that. Very well. We’ll tell him.”

After one more kiss, one more twist of Flynn’s skillful fingers that makes Lucy whimper, and a decision that they can’t get _too_ distracted as there is work to be done, they get up, dressed, and make their way to Asher’s study. They knock and are admitted, the de Clermont patriarch elbow-deep in a pile of important-looking parchment, but he turns to them with his usual gracious expression. “Garcia, Lucy. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I just…” Flynn takes a deep breath. His emotion is clearly visible on his expressive face, the way you can look at him and usually know exactly what he is thinking, as he struggles to wrap his head around the unbelievable gift of being able to do this. “That is, Lucy and I wanted to tell you that we’re – we’re going to be married, at some point, for real. I – I asked her in Prague, and she accepted.”

Asher looks surprised, then smiles warmly. “It does my heart good to know that. The pair of you are well suited. If you will permit me a small betrothal gift, Lucy, I would like to give you a token of my protection. I do not know if you should go timewalking again, but if you do – at least in any year before my death – this will inform any creature you should meet that you are my daughter in law and custom, and any insult to you is one to me. Any message sent sealed with it is one that I will immediately leave to attend, no matter where I am.”

With that, he hands her a seal about the size of a half-dollar, etched with the family crest, pierced through the top as if to be worn on a necklace. The lion and the wolf have both been modified, one paw marked with the Knights of Lazarus’ personal sigil, but there is also an _AC_ in the corner that indicates it as exclusive to Asher. He called it a small gift, and technically it is, but it is also a monumental gesture of his trust in her and his willingness to let his son and his family and possibly even his own fate be placed in her hands, and Lucy finds herself briefly at a loss for words. Then as she turns it over, something occurs to her. The last part of the riddle, the cryptic instructions in the Ashmole fragment, the one they never quite figured out. _Beneath the wolf and lion lies the ring._ When she shakes the seal, it makes a slightly hollow, echoing sound, as if something might be concealed inside, and she looks at Asher. “If I’m wrong, I really, really apologize, and I don’t want to insult you. But just hold on a – I’m going to try something, all right?”

With that, she presses her thumbs into the middle of the seal, bending the thinly worked metal until it splits like a ripe peach, and bursts open. There is indeed a tiny hidden compartment inside, and what is more, the compartment contains a ring. It is made of old black metal, possibly silver, but tarnished enough that she can’t be sure, and it is set with –

Lucy’s breath catches –

– a white stone.

“What is – ” She picks it up and pops it out like a prize from a plastic sphere, one of those things you win at claw machines. The stone is milky, opaque, though it catches the light like an opal where Lucy holds it up, throwing a thousand facets of colorful fire. Stunned, she turns to Asher. “Did you know this was in there? Where did you get it?”

He gives her the sort of inscrutable look that means that the grandmaster of the Knights of Lazarus will keep _some_ secrets. “Do you think you might need it?”

“I – yes, I – I think so.” If the ring is silver, most vampires wouldn’t want to wear it; it’s not enough to hurt them, but it would burn uncomfortably with prolonged exposure. “If we can figure out what to actually do with it, at least.”

“If so,” Asher says, “I hope that you will use it to help save my eldest son, difficult as he is making himself and much as you are doubtless wavering in your conviction. I love Gabriel as much as I love you, Garcia, and I know – ” He pauses, then goes on, “And I know that you two love each other, and it would be no future that either of you truly wanted if that was to lose all chance, however faint, of redemption and reclamation. I know that the Gabriel of this moment is not the one you are fighting for, but the two cannot be dissevered, and if I will not be there, I want him, the man you know, to become what I have always hoped for him.”

“I… yes.” Flynn looks at the ring, but doesn’t make a move to take it from Lucy. “We’ve always planned to save him. He said he didn’t want it, but – ”

“Often with Gabriel,” Asher says, “you must stop your ears entirely to whatever nonsense his mouth is uttering, and look more closely at his actions, if you wish to see where his deepest desire lies. He is not as brave as you, Garcia, not as willing to bare his heart if the world might make mock of it, has clung to his lies and his deceits for so long not out of malice, but an utter and unbearable tenderness, a raw and fearful young thing that lives in darkness and cannot quite abide the touch of the sun. All his pomp and frippery, his preening and posing, his drink and philandering, are the masks he wears to make it ache not quite so terribly, the poison he takes to numb himself. This is not the time nor the place to mend you and him, but whenever you return to yours, I hope you will think on it.”

Flynn pauses, then nods. “All right,” he says. “I will, Papa. I promise.”

“Then you have my blessing upon your marriage, and I shall see about finding a new seal to replace the one your wife has broken.” Asher winks at Lucy, as if to assure her that there are no hard feelings. “If so, I suspect you have work to be getting on with.”

They do, at that, and after he has hugged Flynn and kissed Lucy’s hand, they take their leave, returning to the library. Lucy combs through the Ashmole pages for the full list of ingredients needed to make the Philosopher’s Stone, and writes down everything she can think of that they might be able to get. Flynn is dispatched to see about acquiring them, and Lucy sets to work. She fetches a pair of pliers and removes the stone from the setting, placing it in a glass dish, and reads through the formula several times. The Latin is antique and complicated, the handwriting (never a strength of medieval manuscripts) is flourishing and nearly illegible, and she doesn’t want to make any mistakes. She copies it out onto a clean piece of parchment, and distractedly accepts when Cecilia appears to see if she would like something to eat. She cut corners and sped the process with black magic for the golem, which worked, but she isn’t sure if that is a wise idea to risk again.

Lucy works steadily, eats when it turns up, loses track of time, and finally decides that she needs to get outside and take a breath of fresh air. She makes her way out onto the wallwalks of Sept-Tours, from which she can see across the estate and toward the village, and enjoys the breeze on her face, drawing deep breaths. She leans on the crenels, spacing out and basking in the sunshine, until her attention is drawn by two small figures in the orchard, out in the grounds. Even from here, it’s unmistakably Gabriel and Flynn, and they’re walking side by side, heads together, absorbed in conversation. Lucy is glad that Flynn went to put Asher’s advice into practical application and offer yet one more olive branch, but something makes her look back. They look… well, it’s not a bad thing, but it’s enough out of the ordinary from all recent experiences for it to be noteworthy. They look _happy_. Like two halves of one thing, arm in arm, tilted toward each other like passing stars caught in the gravity of the other’s orbit until it rearranges into one. It sparks that hint of jealousy that Lucy can’t help but feel sometimes, when it comes to Gabriel and how much he and Garcia used to belong to each other, but given that she and Flynn just informed Asher of their plans to be married, she has no need whatsoever for it. And yet.

Frowning, she glances at them one more time, takes a final purifying breath, and heads back to the library. She is just checking over her preparations and setting the stone into an alembic when the door opens and Flynn barges in, arms full of the spoils of his morning. “I think I got most of it. Couldn’t find the damn dragon tooth, obviously, but since that’s some brand of judicious fakery anyway, I don’t imagine it matters.”

“Probably not.” Lucy examines his haul, then says, “I’m glad you went to talk to Gabriel, at least. Did you get whatever it was straightened out?”

“What?” Flynn frowns at her. “What are you talking about? I haven’t seen Gabriel today. Still down in the village, I suppose. Anyway, I thought we could – ”

“No, I saw you just now, in the orchard.” Lucy frowns in turn. It _was_ from a distance, but she should be trusted to know Flynn when she sees him. “You were talking together, you were walking arm-in-arm. You looked… you seemed happy.”

“No.” Flynn shakes his head, puzzled. “Not sure who, but it can’t have been me.”

This strikes Lucy as both odd and ominous, but there’s not much to do apart from accept either that she was mistaken or that Gabriel has another tall dark-haired acquaintance who looks like Flynn at a distance. She starts assembling the components, following the instructions exactingly, until the crucibles start to boil and bubble in an appropriately mystic fashion and the solution throws off weird-smelling smoke that make her open a window for ventilation. Lucy wondered at the advisability of doing this in the library, which isn’t exactly a dedicated laboratory, but it’s where they will have all their reference books on hand, she has cleared off the table so there’s nothing to catch fire and no old paper too close by, and it is the one place outside of Flynn’s tower where they can work without bothering the rest of the family. Aside from the dungeons, that is, but Lucy doesn’t want to make the Philosopher’s Stone in a dungeon. Seems damp, dark, and just not into the aesthetic.

At some point, there is not much else to do other than stand there and watch it gurgle, and indeed since the recipe calls for it to be remain undisturbed for a day and a night, Lucy decides that they should withdraw and let it to its own ineffable devices. They leave the library, come across Cecilia in the hallway, and Flynn stops her. “Don’t let anyone go in there. We have something delicate that we’re doing, it can’t be disturbed.”

Cecilia surveys him, the way they both smell of strange chemicals, Flynn’s hair has an orange streak in it and Lucy’s dress (still one of Maria’s, though a less fancy one) probably will need to be torn up for rags, and as ever, does not ask. She nods in acknowledgment, and they return to the house, where Asher comes downstairs, apparently done with his work for the morning and interested in a bit of exercise. “I was thinking of a sparring session,” he says. “We had one back in London, but if you wanted to practice – ”

“That might be a good idea.” Flynn gets to his feet, as if thinking of all the enemies he might be obliged to defeat in a duel, and Lucy chews her cheek to hide her smile. She missed their last go-round due to her visit to Marlowe, and wants to observe this one for important science reasons, so she follows Flynn and his father out of the house and into the yard. Flynn and Asher select their swords, take up position, and raise them before their faces. Then, having exchanged the proper salute between swordsmen, they wait a split second, testing the other’s nerve, then lunge.

It is – Lucy is right, it is _highly_ scientific, and she finds herself riveted by the spectacle. They move almost too fast to be seen, exchanging a dizzying flurry of blows, up and down and side to side and back and forth again. They’re not using the thin, elegant basket-handled rapiers that comprise an Elizabethan gentleman’s usual costume, but heavy, two-handed broadswords, Scottish claymores, the kind of thing that could split a grown man cleanly in half even if a vampire wasn’t wielding it. Nonetheless, with supernatural strength and hundreds of years of training at their command, Flynn and Asher flick them as if they are feathers. Sparks fly from their trailing edges, they clash and parry and clash again, and the intensity ramps up to such a degree that Lucy is almost afraid to watch, though they’re both too good to admit any mistake. Nonetheless, Asher is not the grandmaster and the sire and the strongest immortal alive for nothing, and one of Flynn’s blows comes a split-second too late. Asher dives under his guard like a striking viper, rips up and back, and Flynn’s sword goes spinning out of his hand, hitting the mud point-first a good twenty feet away. He goes down on one knee, disarmed and defenseless, and raises his hands in surrender. “Yield.”

“Very good.” Asher, only slightly breathless, one dark curl falling in his face, glances around at the sound of applause – from Lucy, but also from the balcony above. Maria de Clermont gazes down at her husband with a deeply approving look that makes Lucy guess she will reward him for the fine showing later, and Asher sweeps his sword out and bows dashingly. “Come down here and give your champion a kiss, my queen? I did earn it, no?”

Maria eyes him appraisingly – and then, since she is a vampire and has no need to take the stairs, springs up on the balcony railing and leaps down. Quick as a blink, Asher drops his sword, darts beneath her, holds out his arms, and catches his wife as she falls elegantly into them. It is the most playful that Lucy has ever seen either of them, and Maria loops an arm around Asher’s neck, nosing close for a kiss. The two of them are totally lost in each other, as if they were only married weeks ago instead of almost two millennia, and Flynn gets to his feet while his father is distracted, waggling his eyebrows as if to say that if this was a real fight, he could have opportunely seized this moment to turn the tables. But he smiles as he watches his parents, though he clearly cannot forget the fact that eventually, this is going to be taken from them. He glances at Lucy instead, and a certain frisson passes between them, the same sort of promise. She swallows, maintaining eye contact, and tilts her head.

Flynn casually follows her out of the yard, up into the house, and up the stairs into their tower. They get faster as they go, he catches her by the wrist and spins her around, and by the time the door slams behind Lucy, she is being pressed up against it in a ferocious, starving kiss, as Flynn lifts her entirely off her feet and the two of them make out with wild abandon. Lucy already got plenty hot and bothered from watching that little display, they have been trying to make up for lost time, and this – something about this moment feels charged, different, dazzling with a new possibility. As if they’ve been waiting all this time, waiting for one reason or another, and now at last, when it needed to be, it is here.

They practically tear each other’s clothes in the haste of getting them off, and Lucy thinks that it’s a good thing the dress was destined for scrap anyway. She rakes her hands greedily over Flynn’s chest, pulling the shirt over his head, and he catches the back of her head and jerks her up into a neck-straining, devouring kiss that sets off sparks like fireworks. She kisses him back just as frantically, as he tears straight through the tough canvas of her corset like tissue paper and she wraps her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him to encourage him to do it more, to go farther, to test or even surpass his strictly imposed control. She can take it. He has to know she can. There are no doubts this time, no questions. This is unlike any way they have ever been together before, and it is intoxicating.

In a few moments, they are naked, and Flynn practically leaps across the room in his need to get them to the bed, as Lucy hits the mattress hard enough to make the heavy bedframe jerk a few inches and hit the wall with a thud. There are enough pillows and quilts to cushion the impact, of course, and she doesn’t mind in the least. They roll over and over, she is aware of the white glow rising around her and the red glow emanating from him like blazing force fields – _when stars collide like you and I, no shadows block the sun._ It feels physical, rebounding through her like a magnetic charge, and Lucy understands that this is something as vital and necessary to their proper making of the Philosopher’s Stone as anything else they have done today, some transcendent ascension and apotheosis of her power. _The white queen weds the red king, and so by it the Sacred Marriage, the Great Work, is done._

Flynn touches her up and down, circling his thumbs in the hollow of her hips, cupping the curve of her ass and the swell of her breasts, planting burning kisses on her collarbone and cleavage and stomach, as she struggles to map enough of him beneath her hands: the hard, weather-worn muscle, the long lines of arm and leg, the breadth of shoulder and the firmness of his chest, the scars that even immortality will never quite take from him. They are dazzled and dizzy and drunk on each other, and Flynn sucks a nipple into his mouth, scraping it with his teeth, as Lucy slides a hand down his stomach to take hold of him and they both utter a strangled gasp. Then he lets go, climbs on top of her and pushes her legs apart, and Lucy reaches for him, guiding him into her as he rolls his hips and thrusts inside her to the hilt, driving a stuttering whine out of her flattened lungs as she whines and ruts against him, digging her heels into the mattress. Her fingernails stripe on his back, she jerks his head to kiss her, and then after a few moments, presses his questing mouth lower. To her neck, to the vein, to what she has, in some shape or form, been wondering about since they got together. For once, for _once,_ there is no hesitation in him at all. He bares his fangs, and at the next stroke, making her body jerk and jump as he fills her hot and hard and heavy, bites her.

Lucy almost loses her mind. It’s – it’s indescribable, chemical, animal, a half-sweet madness that keeps reaching a higher and higher pitch, until she absolutely cannot bear it, and then her atoms reconfigure into something stronger and rarer and lighter, and she can. Flynn feeds on her and fucks her with methodical, merciless thoroughness, as a pleasure too fierce and intense to be contained rips through her. It’s something at once hers and his, shared between their unified bodies, where the boundaries of flesh barely exist and the boundaries of mind not at all. Hammer and anvil, he strikes her, and she beats him in return, as they fly completely off the bed, a foot in the air, and twist and snarl like a lightning strike. Flynn grabs hold of her thighs and hitches them up alongside his hip, doubling the pace of his already rapid-fire thrusts. She is so wet that he almost slips out of her, then takes her altogether, and sucks a deep gulp as he hits the spot inside her that makes her see white. Lucy is losing it, _losing_ it, unstrung, unwound, unmade – and then bit by bit, reforged. She blazes, burns, incinerates. She can feel magic in every sinew, too strong to be controlled, pouring out of every pore and engulfing the two of them, the bed, the room. It must sear across the entire universe, the fixed stars of the firmament, earth to sky, from the wings of heaven to the reaches of hell. _The king and queen come together, and so they remake the world._

The climax, when it comes, seizes hold of her insides and twists them inside out. It is not gentle or easy or delightful. It is raw and wild and necessary, is urgent and delirious and ecstatic, halfway to agony and then careering drunkenly back to ecstasy again. Lucy has lost all sense of who they are or where they are or anything except the inexorable tempo of their union and their devouring. She wants to swear, or say something, but all the breath has been driven out of her. Language likewise remains deprived from her, unnecessary, too impossible to fit the sensation into. She just lies there, or perhaps she flies. She has never in her life experienced anything remotely like that. She wants to weep, or laugh, or sing, or soar.

At last, very slowly, the two of them begin to return to themselves, still too stunned to speak. Lucy continues to burn like the heart of an exploding star, has some vague notion that she might set everything on fire if she doesn’t turn it off, and yet her entire being has been made into something different, rare and refined, a power she cannot yet begin to comprehend. It takes what feels like a small eternity before she can sit up, not sure she will ever be able to walk again in her life. “Was that the – ?”

Flynn is still utterly offline on any sort of language whatsoever, so he can’t answer, and Lucy is left to consider that yes, it had to be – if nothing else, because if it wasn’t, she can’t imagine what it could possibly be instead. The alchemical wedding, white and red, when the forging of the Philosopher’s Stone, the transformation from white to red, has always been alchemy’s greatest goal. Nobody has ever truly done it before, not that she knows, and of course, they have not succeeded yet. But this is something entirely else, something no human alchemist has ever come close to replicating. She moves slowly, afraid that she might go off like a bomb if she isn’t careful. Who – or perhaps _what –_ is she now?

“Jesus,” Flynn says after several more minutes. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Lucy says, because truly, she is, she feels better than she ever has. Bust out of here and run up Mount Everest, as the saying goes. “Yes, I am.”

He sits up, still somewhat shaken, and pulls her to sit between his legs, carefully licking the bite marks on her neck until they close and otherwise making sure that she has been appropriately reconstituted. At last, he groans, kisses her gently, and says, “I need to see if I can sort out a few things, but I’ll be back later. Hmm?”

“Hmm.” Lucy turns to kiss him again, and he gets up to see if he can locate his clothes and if they are in any state to be worn again. Her dress definitely is not, and while part of her wants to rush down to the library and start tinkering with the Stone immediately, the recipe did say to leave it alone, and she might need time to adjust to her new power. So once Flynn has dressed and gone, she pulls on a shift and shawl and sits at the desk. She wonders how much noise they were making, and if the whole house heard that. Awkward.

Lucy works until dusk, when she decides to search out some proper clothes and go down to the house for food. Insanely athletic universe-altering magical sex is definitely good in the department of working up an appetite, and she turns toward the trunk. She doubts Flynn has any spare women’s clothes in here, and frankly might be quite jealous if he did, but –

Just as she’s digging into it, the door rattles open, and she glances up to see Flynn himself returning. Somewhat surprisingly, he’s wearing different clothes than when he went out. They seem, in fact, to be the clothes from when she spotted him with Gabriel in the orchard – which, considering he said that he wasn’t actually there, is even more confusing. But that’s not the oddest thing. At the sight of her, he stops short as if he wasn’t expecting her to be there, and looks her up and down with a chilly suspicion that is utterly unlike any way he has looked at her before – and to say the least, seems out of place after what they were just doing. Then he says in Old French, “Are you the witch?”

“I beg your pardon?” Lucy pulls the shawl tighter, which is the last response she should have considering that it is her _husband_ (fake husband, soon-to-be-real-one, etcetera). “Of course I’m the witch, Garcia, what are you talking about?”

He doesn’t answer, continuing to regard her with those wary, shut-off eyes. She has gotten so used to the wryness and tenderness and devotion in them, their softness when he looks at her, that it is shocking to realize it isn’t there. He looks at her as if she’s a stranger, as if he doesn’t know and doesn’t remotely trust her, and then flashes over and grabs hold of her arm. “Very well. Gabriel’s waiting in the library. It’s time for you to use the book for us.”

“What are you – ” Lucy struggles, to no avail, to free herself. His vampiric strength was delightful and erotic earlier, but this is frightening. Her feet clatter like a broken puppet’s as he hauls her to the door and out into the darkness of the tower stairs. “Garcia, stop! Garcia, you’re scaring me!”

He doesn’t answer, jaw set, as Lucy seriously considers screaming for Asher, or Christian, or someone. Is he _kidnapping_ her? Why on earth would he do that? Why couldn’t he ask her, why would he treat her like this, why doesn’t he appear to know who she is or that she is the woman he was asking for his father’s blessing to marry earlier – this is – nothing makes _sense,_ he can’t, did Rittenhouse switch bodies with him, has something – her mind is paralyzed with panic and isn’t working, she doesn’t –

And just then, a truly horrifying possibility occurs to Lucy. She doesn’t know for sure, how he would have received word, or how quickly he could have discovered that his errand to Dalmatia was fictitious and turned around – or if someone made sure that he did. But the idea sears her to the bone, the awareness of slow-motion, inescapable calamity. She asked Flynn, all the way back in New York before they left, what would happen if he met his past self, that it couldn’t be good. He said that they did have to get him out of the way, and this is the cardinal, the _fundamental_ rule of time travel – this _can’t happen,_ he can’t meet himself _–_ and Gabriel’s waiting in the library – Gabriel _knows_ – _I have to visit someone in the village –_

As not-Flynn is about to force her into the corridor leading to the library, and Lucy is very seriously considering murdering Gabriel no matter their promise to Asher, there’s a sudden, violent knock on the front door. The sort of knock that sounds as if it was made with the butt of a pistol, and while not-Flynn clearly wants to ignore it, he can’t take that chance. He hesitates, growls under his breath as the knock comes again, then turns and marches to the door, jerking it open with one hand while keeping firm hold of Lucy with the other. “Yes? What the hell do – ”

“Good evening.” The man on the other side is dressed in a mud-splattered riding cloak, breathing hard, face pale but eyes burning, alive with ugly fire. Edward Kelley twists the muzzle of his gun under Jack’s chin, then cracks a rictus of a smile. “I am pleased to see that this _is_ the right place. The valet said so when I threatened the boy, but he could have been lying, and regrettably, I have had to shoot him. Never mind. Down to business. I was very much hoping that we could discuss the immediate return of my manuscript.”


	20. Memento Mori

Until this particular moment of her life, this very instant upon which the entire world exists or does not upon a single toss of a celestial coin, Lucy always thought that everything turning into dreamy slow motion, watching calamity unfold in excruciating detail but being unable to do a thing to stop it, only happened in movies or nightmares. It, however, is indisputably the case right now, as if the entire concept of linear time has veered off the rails and is devouring itself like an ouroboros – and indeed, with Past Flynn here, that is exactly what is happening. Her attention is fixed on a few diamond-sharp points, as if her brain has gone into survival mode and is filtering out all the extraneous nonsense, focusing only on the details that will save her life, or lose it. Past Flynn’s grip is bruisingly hard, holding her in front of him as a human shield, so that neither he nor Kelley can risk a point-blank shot without hitting the other’s hostage. Presumably he wants her alive, to do something in the library, but it is less clear if any concern extends after that. Lucy wants to scream, but her voice has shut down. Where is her Garcia? Where is Asher, or Christian? _Anyone?_

“No sudden moves, vampire.” Kelley’s voice is harsh, and he jerks the gun out from under Jack’s chin to train it between Past Flynn’s eyes instead. “Thou knowest what this is? It has silver bullets. If I shoot thee with it, I have it on good authority that it can kill thee properly dead. Or a hardwood stake aimed well through the heart? I have that too. Tell me what thou didst with my manuscript, and such unpleasantness can be averted. Otherwise – ”

“I don’t have your bloody manuscript.” Past Flynn is clearly furious at this inopportune disruption to his plans, as well as not having a clue who Kelley is or why he thinks he filched it. “The witch took it, her and the other one. Though if you think you shall turn up at our own home and demand its return, you have _no_ idea what you’re – ”

Kelley’s attention swivels to Lucy, and his mouth twists into an unpleasant grin. “Ah, Lady Clairmont. We meet again. Did I not warn you back in Prague that thy further interference in my plans would be cause for considerable grief? If I had thrown thee out the window properly, it would not have come to this. As it is – ”

 _“Shut up.”_ Lucy’s voice is high, half-hysterical, and no matter if it might be a bad idea to bait the crazy alchemist while he is holding a gun that can kill everyone in this house, she can’t help it. This situation was bad enough without _him._ “We’re not giving it back to you. Now get out of here, or _all_ of them are going to tear you apart.”

“I think not.” Kelley takes a step, cocking the heavy pistol with a thunk and a spark from the flintlock. “Lord Clairmont, tell me where, or I blow your wife’s brains out.”

Past Flynn looks slightly stunned, even as the word percolates to both men in different ways. Kelley seems to note for the first time that Flynn is making no attempt to protect his “wife” – is indeed actively endangering her, though he can’t discount the possibility that it’s a nerves-of-steel, cold-blooded bluff. For his part, Flynn belatedly remembers that his future self is in a relationship with this witch, and if he had two percent critical thinking skills in entering the bedroom like a normal person and pretending there was something he needed to talk to her about in the library, this entire mess could have been avoided. Lucy very much doubts that she would have been able to tell the difference, at least until it was too late. It is perhaps, perversely, a good thing that Past Flynn is an idiot, but since that means a murderous Edward Kelley is on their doorstep –

 _“Now,_ vampire.” Kelley himself is in no mood for palaver. “Or I – ”

At that moment, several things happen. The first is that Jack stamps on Kelley’s boot like a small fury – as a young orphan boy in London, who’s already been preyed on once, he’s probably had to learn a few things in the fine art of breaking free from a man who’s snatched him. Caught off guard, Kelley staggers sideways, and Lucy unleashes a furious, fiery blast at him like the breath of a dragon. But her new magic is strong enough that it throws her off balance as well, and the blow that was meant to level him goes wide and hits the door frame. Jack dodges, Kelley grabs at him with one hand and pulls the trigger with the other, and the sound of the shot in the enclosed space is deafening. Past Flynn stumbles, clutching his arm, and swears at the top of his lungs. He dives at Kelley, who rolls away and fires again. This shot takes off the head of the carved angel that stands in an alcove, a relic of Sept-Tours’ monastery days, and pulverized stone stings Lucy’s face like tears.

Kelley and Past Flynn jump to their feet at the same instant, as Past Flynn roars and bares his fangs, starts to lunge ferociously, but then is caught short as Kelley whips the stake out of his jacket and holds it like a javelin in his non-gun hand. Past Flynn can’t charge him without a very real risk of being harpooned, and the vampire and the alchemist circle each other like stalking lions. Lucy has absolutely no need to help either of these buffoons, except that one of them is going to turn into the man she loves in four hundred-odd years, and if he dies before that, no matter how stupidly, it’s something she would prefer to avoid. As Kelley closes in for an attempted kill shot on Past Flynn, who is on the brink of doing the same, Lucy skips the preliminaries, braces her feet, and unloads a proper volley.

The entire corridor lights up in infernal red fire, the headless angel explodes, and the force of the blast takes out the window behind it and several of its nearest neighbors. In the smoke and chaos, sparks rebounding and glass shattering, as everyone is momentarily disoriented, Lucy grabs Jack and makes a hell-for-leather break for it.

She is almost to the library – not knowing what she’s going to do there, not knowing if it’s out of the frying pan or into the fire – when the door flies open and Gabriel, clearly having heard the ruckus in the front hall, comes racing out. He sees Lucy just in time to avoid hitting her at full speed, and skids to a halt with a look as if this was definitely not how this was supposed to go. He stares at her, stares at Jack, visibly fails to compute, and then makes a belated attempt to grab Lucy by the arm. “You,” he says. “You, just – come on, just do it, get it over with, and then I promise – ”

“I don’t care!” Lucy lets go of Jack, and orders him with a silent look to run until he finds the other de Clermonts, no matter what. The boy dodges off, as Gabriel makes an abortive grab for him, but Jack nimbly slips through his fingers. Gabriel whirls as if to chase him, but Lucy grabs his wrist. “Don’t – you – _fucking –_ dare!”

Gabriel stares at her, face lit in unearthly glow from the distant, wild light. Lucy can’t be sure, but she thinks her blast may have set something on fire. She strains her ears for any sound of Kelley and Past Flynn – hasn’t heard any more gunshots, at least, but that means nothing. As Gabriel makes another attempt to pull her toward the library, Lucy wrenches free and slaps him across the face so hard that his head turns with a crack.

It can’t hurt him – can’t even really stun him, at least physically, but he was not prepared for it, and with the force of her new power behind it, it sends him sideways into the wall. He glances down the hall as if in some symbiotic, desperate awareness that his Garcia is in trouble, but Lucy doesn’t let him get that far. She grabs him by the collar, fueled by rage and magic and adrenaline, and nearly manages to lift him off his feet. “I _said, don’t you dare!”_

Gabriel is considerably taken aback. It’s not every day that he’s thrown around physically by a witch half his size, and Lucy takes the opportunity to unleash another white-hot torrent, which knocks him a good six feet backwards onto his ass. While he is there, she storms over to him and holds out both hands, burning with incinerating fire, as a polite suggestion not to stand up too hastily. “You son of a bitch,” she says. “How could you do this?”

“How could _I_ – ?” Gabriel wipes his face with his arm, makes half a move to rise, then immediately stops at the clear and present indication that she is not in the least fucking around and is in fact prepared to actually murder him. “You were the ones who – you did – ”

“Yes,” Lucy says, more wildly than ever. She wants to sound cool and composed and queenly, but she can’t. “Yes, we _told_ you – or rather, Garcia told you – that your son dies in the future. He has been torn apart over that secret this entire time, he knew he couldn’t tell you because you would react like this, and then you did, and I can’t – I _know_ what happens is terrible! I know it tears apart your family, I know it can’t ever be repaired, and I’m sorry, I am so sorry for it! But you know what? The man that I met the first time, the Gabriel that I know in the twenty-first century – I _liked_ him! Because he was, despite everything _,_ a good man! He helped rescue me, he trusted his brother and forgave him and he sacrificed his life for him, even after everything they had been through! And it was the worst, the _worst_ thing that ever happened to Garcia. He watched you die, and he died too, and I made a bargain with the Goddess, the _Goddess,_ to save your _miserable_ life! I promised her anything she wanted, if she would give us the chance to save you! So what was that for? _What?”_

Gabriel stares up at her like a deer in headlights. He opens his mouth and makes a feeble croaking noise, but Lucy is not remotely about to stop now. She takes a step, forcing him flat onto his back, burning in heavenly fire from head to toe, white and terrible. “I know you can’t be right now who you are in four hundred years. I know it couldn’t possibly be fair to ask you to, and we turned your entire life upside down and you never should have had to know what we told you. But that Gabriel, our Gabriel – he was a _better man._ What happened was awful, but he grew up. He did what his father wanted for him, when his father begged us to still save him no matter what, to give him that chance! Right now, you’re a mess. You think you’re charming and funny and irresistible, but you’re petty and selfish and cowardly, and you think that the harder you cling onto your delusions, you can somehow make them real again. You never liked me, you never gave me a real chance, you never wanted me here or to be part of your lives. But I’ve tried to like you, over and over. I have worked my _ass_ off trying to help you. I didn’t really know what I felt about you, but it was always enough for me that Garcia loved you! But it was never enough for _you_ that Garcia loved _me,_ because you thought you’d always have him to yourself, your lives would always be the way they were and you’d never have to actually say a word to keep it like that! I don’t know what you were expecting, but you could have possibly thought _once_ that it might be this!”

“I…” Gabriel’s voice is an ashen whisper. “Lucy – I didn’t – ”

“You didn’t what?” Lucy is almost in tears with her frustration, her fury, how good it feels to finally vent everything she has kept bottled up, all the times she has bitten her lip and taken Gabriel’s bullshit in the name of the greater good. “You just thought it would be like that forever and you would never have to make an effort? You want to know how I learned what happened in 1762 the first time? Garcia didn’t tell me. You did. _You_ told me about how he fell in love with the Prussian army captain, Matej Radić, and that the two of you fought for seven years on the wrong side of the war, against the French, because of it. At the end, Flynn brought Matej home and meant to mate with him, you encouraged him to do that, and as a result, Christian was killed. Matej told a group of vampire hunters where to find him because he was a spy for the French king, and the vampire hunters mortally wounded him, then attacked Sept-Tours itself. Matej was shot protecting Garcia, and Garcia tried to turn him to save his life, but he didn’t do it right and made him into some kind of monster. You had to kill Matej yourself, and then the two of you nearly killed each other. Your relationship never recovered. That was what was hanging over Garcia, my Garcia, this whole time. And here, I’ve watched you sabotage yourself again, both of you! You did it already and you never forgave each other and you’re _doing it again!_ You don’t understand what it will cost you, how miserable you’re going to be, how much you’re going to lose, and _you are ruining it!”_

She is almost shouting, can hear the flames spreading, knows in complete despair that she did it, that she is the one burning Sept-Tours now, that all their fears about her were justified, that the tragedy is replaying anew. She needs to stop shouting at Gabriel and go deal with the flames, but she can’t turn her back on him just yet. She takes two steps, deliberate as a stalking tigress, and snarls, “Did you touch the philosopher’s stone?”

“Philosopher’s – ?” Gabriel looks – well, he looks like any number of things, but there is no recognition in his blank stare. “The book – I found the book, not the stone – what stone?”

“Good.” Lucy raises a fist wreathed in blazing flame, and he flinches. “You know who’s out there right now? Kelley. Edward Kelley. He followed us here from Prague, he murdered your valet for information, and threatened Jack. He shot your Garcia after he came up to the bedroom to grab me. _Where is my Garcia? Where are your parents?”_

“I sent – ” Gabriel’s voice is a whisper. “I sent a message that there was trouble in the village, so they would be obliged to come and deal with it. A mob hunting for Huguenots. It was not a lie, there were some in the countryside, but I thought it would keep them away long enough for you to use the Book of Life and – ”

Lucy turns to stare madly down the corridor. She can’t see the grounds from here, the nearest window is at the end, and they need to stop the fire before it reaches the library. Sept-Tours is stone, the outer walls and towers won’t burn easily, but it can gut the interior, including Ashmole 782 and the philosopher’s stone. She wants to think that Asher and the others will see the place on fire, realize that the diversion was a trick, and race back here, but precious seconds are already being lost. Can Jack find them in time? Did Kelley bring more men? It looked as if it was just him, but he could have decided not to underestimate the challenge of storming the lair of a powerful vampire family, and –

There’s another boom and crash from the direction of the front hall. It sounds as if Past Flynn and Kelley are still slugging it out, and Lucy swivels on Gabriel as if to make unbearably clear that this is it, this is the ultimate moment to choose his allegiances. He can make amends for what he’s done, and try to stop it while there is still time. Otherwise, promise to Asher or otherwise, she will destroy him. It would kill her to do it, and she might have to run away from here and never see Flynn again, accept the eternal hatred of his family – but still. She will do what she has to, come what may.

Their eyes lock. Gabriel looks – _shaken_ isn’t quite the right word, insofar as it is not momentous enough, not encompassing enough, to cover what is on his face. He can clearly tell that she has plenty of motive to dispose of him, that he has brought this plague upon his own house, but that she doesn’t want to do it, that she doesn’t want to do it more than anything. He cannot understand that paradox, since he himself has done nothing to merit her compassion. The only thing that can explain it, the only reason that he is prostrate before the queen and still alive, is because she must be telling the truth. She knows him, she knows a _better_ him, and if he dies now, he will never be it.

The world continues to balance on a point, in that impossible stillness on the brink of the abyss. Lucy and Gabriel continue to stare at each other. He might be about to say something, but he doesn’t get the chance. That is because the window at the end of the hall breaks – it’s a good two stories off the ground, the chances of it doing so by accident are low – and the glass is smashed out. It’s followed two seconds later by an utterly frantic-looking Flynn, who appears to have leapt straight up from a running start below, his eyes wide and wild. “LUCY!”

She jerks her head up, knowing by the desperate sound of the shout and the fact that he’s coming from the opposite end of the house that this is hers, her Garcia, and some part of her wants to dissolve in relief. The rest of her can’t let it. She senses something like the twin positive poles of a magnet, being forced together but repelled by their identical charges, and knows that he can’t, he _can’t_ come any closer to his other self. The air is bending and wavering weirdly around him, he hisses and grabs his arm for no apparent reason, and when his hand comes away, it’s dark and sticky with blood. He stares at it in complete confusion, then decides that it’s irrelevant, not when she’s in danger. _“LUCY!”_

“Garcia, _don’t!”_ Lucy’s own shriek is more than a little hysterical. She waves her arms, trying to ward him off, to get him to go the long way around, but all he sees is the fire and the threat and the violated library – and her, alone among the maelstrom, small and solitary and about to be ripped away from him too. “Garcia, you can’t, you can’t, he’s – _you’re here!”_

Flynn looks as if he can’t understand why this was a question, that yes, of course he is here, and he intends to be much _more_ here in an instant. He hasn’t even seen Gabriel, he’s so fixated on her. He sprints down the hall, only then spots his brother, and leaps adroitly over him at the last instant, landing on the far side and snatching Lucy off her feet. “What the _hell,_ ” he roars, which frankly is more than understandable, but they don’t have time, they don’t have _time,_ because time has gone all wrong and it melts and sluffs and slews, dripping like melted candlewax on the floor. If this isn’t stopped, it could consume not only Sept-Tours, but all of known reality. “What the hell did you do?!”

This appears to be directed at Gabriel, who has been completely dumbstruck by the sight of him. He remains frozen a split-second longer, and then he jumps to his feet. “Garcia,” he says, in a voice that Lucy has never heard him use, not to this Flynn, not this stunned and raw and desperately devoted, an adoration and a terror that burns like the collapsing stars around them. It does not matter that this is not the one that he knows; it has become clear in an instant that Gabriel cannot possibly stand back and watch him go into any kind of danger, no matter what he might have thought or planned before. “Garcia, you can’t be here.”

Flynn is still holding onto Lucy with one arm, but he looks fully set to use the other one to punch Gabriel in the nose. But it’s his bad arm, the one that – although he doesn’t know it – has somehow acquired his doppelgänger’s wound, the way reality has gotten thin and slippery and bendable, not sure where to apply the cause or the effect. He hisses and drops his hand, as more blood seeps down his sleeve, and stares at it in incomprehension. Flames are visible at the other end of the hall, burning like the mouth of hell, and he is obviously not going to stand here and watch Sept-Tours be destroyed, not when this exact scene has haunted him for two hundred and fifty-six years, the ungodly epitome of a self-fulfilling prophecy. He puts Lucy down, and with no further ado, pelts off into the fire.

Almost inadvertently, Lucy and Gabriel spin toward each other. They have recently – to say the least – been at odds, Lucy was fully prepared to kill him, and Gabriel must have realized that he would have more than somewhat deserved it. But this slashes through their paralysis and their enmity alike, replacing it with the utter and simple conviction that they can’t let this happen, they can’t. They both love Garcia too much to do anything else in the world, and despite everything, it is very simple. At once, together, they run.

It gets very hot very quickly. Lucy inhales a choking breath of smoke and ash, gags and tastes it in the back of her throat, and knows that she’ll have to cast a protective spell if she wants to survive more than a few minutes in the inferno. Gabriel has no need to breathe, so at least he won’t die of smoke inhalation, but vampires can be killed with fire, and the risk is just as real to him. He catches her arm and pulls her upright as she stumbles, they battle down the corridor together, and Lucy’s scream bruises her charred throat. “GARCIA? _GARCIA!”_

She sees movement across the way, but can’t tell if it’s him, or anyone. The fire has reached the wooden beams that brace the roof, crackling and devouring as they fall in thunders of sparks, and Gabriel yanks her out of the way as one comes down directly overhead. He manages to get hold of the entire rain barrel standing just outside the door and heaves the hogshead at the flames, but while they splash and spark and hiss, they don’t extinguish. This is magical witchfire, started by Lucy’s own ricocheting spell, and only comparable magic can put it out. She conjured witch-rain at Sept-Tours once before, but that was inadvertent, unconscious, an emotional response to Flynn leaving her behind. If she doesn’t do that now, he might leave her behind in a far more permanent way, and she struggles madly to concentrate long enough to do it. Her eyes sting, her throat blisters when she opens it to take a breath, and she’s starting to feel lightheaded from the smoke. Even she, the caster of this spell, is not immune to its effects. It’s raging out of control, it was thrown like a bomb, and now everyone in the blast zone is going to pay the price.

There are pops and groans in the roof as the fire starts to eat it, every side is a wall of flames, and Lucy can’t get through anyway. She stares at it, rocking on her heels, prepared to just lower her head and charge through anyway, but at that instant, Gabriel snatches her up bodily, yells something at her that she can’t understand, and leaps.

It’s a literally superhuman jump, a good twenty feet over what is turning into a burning lake of lava, and they land on the far side, in the unburnt half of the corridor, though at the rate the fire is advancing, they only have a few minutes to get it out before it spreads to the rest of Sept-Tours. It’s too hot and dry for Lucy to summon a single drop of witch-rain; she can manage a few sprinkles, but it’s sucked up almost instantly. She’s used too much magic, too fast, and she changes tacks. With an enormous effort of will, she summons up her firedrake familiar, which this time is almost the size of a real dragon. She bursts free in an explosion of sparkling, sinuous scales, the mighty updrafts from her wings causing the flames to gutter, and she opens her almighty jaws and devours the fire whole.

On the brink of passing out, only held upright by Gabriel’s bruising grip on her waist, Lucy mentally instructs the firedrake to put out the blaze. She can only hope it’s going to work, and that she will have enough magic to pour into the effort. And then, since they can definitely hear noises from the end of the corridor, and if they don’t get there in time, absolutely everything will be destroyed regardless, they sprint flat-out.

Two shadows waver weird and hugely on the wall ahead, two shadows unsettlingly identical in shape and form. Garcia Flynn de Clermont is standing at one side of the room, and Garcia Flynn de Clermont is standing at the other. They are staring at each other with (understandable) looks of utterly blank shock on their faces, and the Flynn on the left – Present Flynn – is pointing a gun at his past self, who he clearly thinks might be Rittenhouse in disguise. Past Flynn, for his part, clearly also thinks that Present Flynn is a potential agent of chaos deliberately destroying his life in the future, and is doing the same. Of course only this man would elect for the option of shooting himself and obliterating his existence either way, and the panicking Lucy and Gabriel run in at the same time. In one voice, or both, or neither, they scream, “DON’T!”

Both Flynns whirl around, and the exact same expression of disbelief perforce crosses their faces. It is wildly disorienting, and time has become even more volatile to the point where a single shot, whether or not it hits anything, could send this place up like the hydrogen in the _Hindenburg._ Past Flynn stares at Gabriel, while Present Flynn stares at Lucy. The sight of them working together is apparently startling enough to cause a moment of doubt in the Flynn hive mind, but the boulder has rolled too far down the hill to be stopped now. They spin back, raising their pistols, as if the other might have taken the chance to shoot while they were distracted, and Lucy raises her hands, conjures an almighty blast of witch-wind, and rips the guns away. They fly across the room, hit the stone wall, and crumple into matchwood.

Flynn and Flynn, deprived of their weapons, are briefly at a loss as to how to proceed. But they’re determined not to leave this confrontation unresolved, and brace as if to prepare for a hand-to-hand fight. Except the air is soupy and thick and twisting around them, both of them are staggering as if they’re about to pass out, and Lucy knows beyond a doubt that if they physically touch, they will create a temporal paradox that is too tangled to resolve. Instead, they will be snuffed out of existence like a blown-out candle, instantly and permanently. She and Gabriel don’t waste words. Instead, once more, into the breach, they leap.

She doesn’t know exactly what happens next. There’s a soundless explosion that burns a hundred, a thousand times brighter than a nuclear mushroom cloud, and she is torn from her consciousness as reality implodes in on itself, crumpling as if it has had its knees kicked out from under it. She spins more wildly than a child on a merry-go-round, and then she plunges. It is an eternity or a negative span of time, an uncontrolled reverse like trying to spool the film back into a cassette, or just a few seconds, until she’s roused by someone urgently shaking her shoulder. She thinks that it must be Flynn, it _has_ to be Flynn, but as the face comes into shaky view, lit in dimming firelight, she sees that it’s not. It’s Gabriel. “Lucy,” he’s saying over and over. “Lucy. Lucy, Lucy, please – please.”

Lucy makes an indeterminate noise, rolls over half an inch, and fights an overpowering urge to vomit. “Where is – ” She sits up very slowly, supported by his hand on her shoulder. “Where’s Garcia?”

“Over there.” Face white, frozen, Gabriel points. “He won’t wake up.”

Lucy still feels completely sick, doesn’t think she can stand up, and crawls on hands and knees over to Flynn’s limp body. There’s only one of him, and it’s her Flynn, but the disappearance of the other feels deeply ominous. She stares up at Gabriel. “Where is – ?”

“Over there.” Gabriel wipes the soot off his face and indicates the inner courtyard, where another unconscious, slumped shape is just visible on the flagstones. “I knew I had to get them apart, or – I don’t know. This is all my fault, and if – ” He breaks off, as if he can’t even bring himself to finish that thought. In a hoarse whisper, he repeats, “This is all my fault.”

It is indeed all his fault, but Lucy doesn’t have time to rub it in, and it’s clear that Gabriel feels wretched about it. So she bends over Flynn, urgently trying to tell if he’s still alive. You can’t exactly check pulse or breath or body warmth in a vampire, and he’s completely motionless, eyes closed and a trickle of blood running from his nose. Most of the flames are out, and Sept-Tours is cast in eerie, demonic shadows, except for the distant, swooping rush of the firedrake circling protectively overhead. Lucy looks up at her, silently commands her to find Asher and the others _now,_ and turns back to Flynn. “Come on,” she whispers. “Come on, Garcia, don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to us. Come on.”

She can feel Gabriel hovering at her back, and turns to him. “Space,” she says. It’s the only thing she can think of that might break the soul-sucking knot between them, the way _Garcia Flynn_ doesn’t know whether to belong to one body or the other. “Gabriel, you need to get the other one as far away from here as you can. Quickly.”

Gabriel doesn’t demur, flashing to the courtyard and lifting the unconscious Past Flynn into his arms. He vanishes through the cloisters just as fast, and Lucy looks at her Flynn’s face again, praying to see some kind of change. She tries every spell she can still muster up, terrified of going overboard and setting off another conflagration, but nothing works. He won’t wake. He won’t wake.

“Come on,” Lucy says again, because she is not, she is _not,_ going to accept any world where this is the case. “Sweetheart. Sweetheart, please. Come back. Come back. We need you.”

She’s just about to see if – cliché as it feels, but she’s desperate – true love’s kiss will do a damn thing, when she hears slow, lurching footsteps in the dark hall, footsteps that don’t belong to Gabriel. She can’t go far or get up to properly defend herself, hampered by the need to defend Flynn like a mother hen perching on her nest, and she doesn’t know if she has one more major spell left in her. She prepares to do what she can, wondering if this is it, the last stand for all of them – then looks up, and recoils.

A good half of Edward Kelley’s face has been burned away, melted and sloughed into a twisted nightmare mask, red and raw and steaming. One eye has been gummed shut, but the other is still open, alive with madness, as he raises a blistered hand. It contains something small and white and glimmering, and with a thrill of absolute, unspeakable horror, Lucy realizes what it is. It’s the philosopher’s stone. He must have accurately judged that the Ashmole pages were in the library, battled through the fire in hopes of retrieving it while the Flynns were distracted with fighting each other, and stumbled instead on a far more priceless treasure. He holds it aloft, allowing her to admire it, and utters a racking, smoke-choked laugh. “So thou hast made it, Lady Clairmont?” he rasps. “Thou, a stupid woman, hast achieved the greatest accomplishment of alchemy? I hath underestimated thee. Thy powers are prodigious indeed. Thou shalt return with me to Prague, and tell me all that I need to know to exhibit it as mine own. I shall be known as the greatest alchemist who ever lived. Rudolf will shower me with weal and largesse and anything that I ask for, and I shall have my final triumph over that old coward, that drooling dotard fool, John Dee.”

Lucy can only stare back at him. She should answer, or say anything, but her tongue has frozen to the roof of her mouth. Kelley has it, he has the stone, and worse, he’s taken it when it was explicitly not supposed to be disturbed. Even if she returns it semi-immediately and follows the rest of the instructions to a nicety, there’s no guarantee that it will work, and they’re missing the last page anyway. This is the only shot they have. There is no real backup plan, or second idea for an antidote. She needs to do something, but she doesn’t know what. Flynn is unresponsive, Gabriel is gone, the courtyard and corridor of Sept-Tours is smoking rubble, and if the rest of the de Clermonts haven’t returned even upon seeing their beloved ancient estate on fire, there must be a very real emergency elsewhere that is delaying them, or time simply has not returned to a state to allow it to move forward. Lucy doesn’t know. Her mind is blank with panic. She raises a shaking hand, preparing one more volley, and Kelley pulls his gun. It’s smoldering and singed, but still looks more than capable of firing, and he trains it on Flynn. “Shall we discern whether he is yet living, Lady Clairmont?”

“You bastard,” Lucy says croakily. “You _bastard.”_

Kelley grins. “I must be the greatest, ‘tis all. In such an ascent, there must be sacrifices, and distasteful choices for the greater good. Now leave go of him and come with me, or he shall indeed be properly dead. That, or – ”

At that, he breaks off, turning around halfway, at the sound of more footsteps from behind him. Christian de Clermont, absolutely filthy and looking as much out of breath as vampires ever can, emerges from the shadows. At the sight of Kelley, he stops short, and his eyes burn blue fire. “You,” he says. “Once again, I find you threatening my aunt, sir, and this time in my family’s own home. Put down whatever you have thieved from us and flee with your miserable skin, or we will tear you to pieces.”

This is delivered in a cool, flat, utterly matter-of-fact tone that once more impresses to the hilt that Christian is plenty dangerous in his own right, just as he didn’t flinch an instant when Kelley had Lucy dangling out a window in Prague. To her, he says urgently, “Grandfather and the others are coming, Aunt Lucy. There was a bloody mess in the village – then Jack turned up and told us that the house was on fire and Kelley had come and he had you. I got him to safety, while Uncle Garcia rushed back here to find you – then something completely bloody bizarre happened and I don’t know if we were doing again what we had just been doing five minutes before, time was not – ”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lucy says. The sight of Christian on the other end of Kelley’s gun, loaded with its deadly silver bullets, has somehow driven her panic to an even greater level. It’s happening, it’s still happening, they have not broken the cycle, it’s about to come to pass despite everything. “Christian, run, do you hear me? _Run!”_

She needs it, she needs him to get out of here, and yet. Of course this brave, sweet boy, who would not for an instant think of leaving her behind in danger, face to face with a madman, does no such thing. He gathers his haunches for a leap, Kelley pulls the trigger, and there is a split second, a moment between the hammer being slammed back, the flint striking the spark and igniting the powder, and the shot going off. Lucy can see it, can _see_ it, and Christian is in mid-leap, a beautiful parabola, intersecting precisely with the path of the bullet. Time continues to refuse to work correctly. It is happening and still happening and _still happening_ and yet it has not _happened,_ and despite everything else that has been destroyed tonight, that will be the nail in the coffin, the one thing that they cannot come back from, that will –

And then, from down the corridor, there’s a noise like a thunderclap that Lucy’s bedazzled brain registers is a sonic boom as a result of something moving faster than sound, and the next instant, a third party enters the fray – altering the meeting between Christian and the bullet, rerouting the fatal trajectory, as Asher de Clermont bursts out of absolutely nowhere and throws himself headlong. He takes the shot full on, does an involuntary somersault, and crashes to the ground. Blood that is almost three thousand years old, ancient as wine sealed up in the amphorae of long-lost shipwrecks, spills across the stones, and at the same time, Lucy hears another sound she has never heard before and never, ever wants to hear again. It is Maria de Clermont, the fierce, the formidable, the unbreakable and the terrifying, the matriarch and queen of this family, screaming at the top of her lungs like a terrified girl.

Everything has been happening too slowly before, and now it happens at hyper-speed, as if it is jumbling and crashing into each other like train cars over a cliff. Asher is down, unmoving, as Maria and William appear in the next instant and race to his side, throwing themselves to their knees next to him. Christian, whether or not he realizes it, just had his life saved, and he is the only one of them with a clear shot at Kelley and the chance to take it. He reaches the alchemist, and seizes his hair with one hand and his tunic with the other. Christian is his grandfather’s protégé – gentle, diplomatic, gracious, forever patient with the de Clermont sons and their nonsense – but just then, there is only his grandmother in him, his grandmother at her wildest and strongest and most ferociously vengeful and unstoppable. He tears Edward Kelley’s head off his neck like wet tissue paper, and blood stains his face like rain.

The trunk sways, still alive for a few horrible, jerking seconds, and then it goes down, pulsing gore. Christian stands there as if completely stunned, staring at his bloodstained hands, clearly in shock and unable to process. Kelley’s head hits the floor with a clunk, and rolls away into a corner. The silence that falls just then, except for Maria’s choked gasps, her breathless whimpers, as she grips Asher’s face in her hands and tries to get his eyes to focus. He’s still alive, but it’s bad. Maria is speaking Greek to him, soft and cooing and gulping with agony, clearly begging him to stay with her, as William looks over and sees Lucy. “Christ,” he says. “If there’s – if you – if there’s _anything_ you can do – ”

Lucy doesn’t know if there is, but she doesn’t care. In another instant, she is kneeling at Asher’s side, as William gets up to comfort Christian, to grab hold of his hands and lead him away from the gruesome sight of Kelley’s decapitated body. They need to get the bullet out, and Lucy rips Asher’s blood-sodden tunic away from the wound, a bare few inches from his heart. This is going to be the most rudimentary surgery ever performed, but indeed, needs must. She heats her hands white-hot and plunges two fingers into the oozing, ragged hole.

Asher jerks and thrashes, as Maria holds his shoulders desperately. Lucy thinks dumbly that every single one of the de Clermonts’ old tragedies, everything they have suffered over for so long – the attack and burning of Sept-Tours, Gabriel and Garcia’s estrangement, Christian dying, Asher doing the same – has happened in some form tonight, and she has heard and seen them for herself. If she stops, it will overwhelm her, it will crush and drown her, and she can’t, she can’t, she _can’t._ After a blind, fumbling moment, she finds the slick edge of the bullet, pulls with more-than-mortal strength of her own, and eases it, raw and dripping, free.

Asher’s eyes are closed, his face grey, as Lucy smooths the wound over with both hands, magically sealing it up as best as she can. He stirs a little, but doesn’t entirely wake, as Maria tears off the bodice of her dress, sliding a hand under his head and lifting him to her chest. “Asher,” she breathes. “Asher, my love, heartsblood. Please.”

He is still not very responsive, but Maria finally gets his mouth to the vein above her heart, the one that Flynn said vampires drank from as part of the mating ritual. Lucy recalls something about it also holding especial healing power, the last-resort attempt to save a mortally wounded vampire. As Maria coaxes and begs Asher until he manages to drink a few drops, Lucy wonders if she is herself still alive, or if she was shot too at some point and this is some alternate self that she has spawned, some forking branch down the garden of many paths. She has never felt less real in her life, floating and disconnected, bobbing along behind her body like a balloon on a string. Some clinical part of her assesses that she may be very traumatized, and her brain is once more only processing the essentials to protect her, that it will get much worse when it all hits. But that is not now and does not matter.

Since Asher is still alive, and by Maria’s utter and ferocious tenacity seems to have at least some chance of staying that way – all she needed was a spark, the tiniest ember, she would have saved him before, no matter what, if there was only the faintest chance – Lucy gets up and goes over to Kelley’s body. She bends down and pulls the philosopher’s stone out of his curled, cooling fingers, and stares at it until she sees double. She needs to go back to the library and return this. Is the library still there? Is Sept-Tours still there?

Lucy floats along the corridor and discovers that it is indeed there, somewhat, in both cases. The library has been prevented from burning too much, though the door is badly scorched, as she steps in, passes the dark shelves, and reaches the worktable. She places the stone back into the setup and reconstitutes as much of it as she can. It doesn’t feel like enough, and she can’t get her feet to move, can’t lift her leaden heart from where it has fallen on the floor. The Goddess said that they could not call on her again until the save-Gabriel quest was done, that they got six months only and Lucy would still owe her anything she asks for even if they didn’t succeed, but Lucy is utterly at the end of her rope. _Help us,_ she begs, the heartbroken entreaty whispered a thousand times into the dark, to the ears of a thousand uncaring deities who have gazed impassively down on the mortal realm and done nothing. _Help us._

Nothing changes tangibly. Maybe her eyes are tricking her. But there might be a slight glow returned to the heart of the stone, something that it did not have a moment ago, and the pipes and crucibles begin to burble and bubble away as if they were never doing anything but. Lucy rubs her eyes, stares at the stone a moment longer, then turns on her heel and goes.

By the time she returns to the scene of carnage in the hall, some effort has been made to clean it up. William has hauled away Kelley’s body, Asher has been carried carefully into the solar and placed on the settle, and Maria is hovering at his side like a hunting falcon. Christian, still in a daze, has wandered over to Flynn and is crouched down, shaking his shoulder. “Uncle Garcia.” His voice cracks like a small boy’s. “Uncle Garcia, I killed Kelley, I killed him. Please wake up. Please wake up.”

“Christian.” Lucy slides a hand under his arm. “Christian, come on.”

He resists her, as she can’t shift him without the benefit of supernatural strength, and both of them look up just as Gabriel reappears out of the night, Cecilia behind him. Even the de Clermonts’ unflappable chatelaine looks white and shocked, and her hands fly to her mouth at the sight of all the blood. _“Dieu au paradis,_ what – what is – down in the village, there was a mob, a terrible scene, but this – what has – where are Monsieur and Madame?”

“In there.” Lucy points at the solar. “Monsieur was – he was injured. Badly. I think he’ll be all right, but – ”

“What?” Christian looks at her, his face a mask of distress. “What happened to Grandfather?”

“What happened to Papa?” Gabriel interrupts at the same instant. He, of course, was not there to witness Asher getting shot to save Christian, nor what Christian did as a result, and he stares at his son with desperate concern, taking in Christian’s shocked, disheveled, and bloody state. “What – what happe – ?”

“I killed him.” Christian utters a laugh that teeters on the brink of a terrible sob. “Edward Kelley. I found him threatening Aunt Lucy, he was going to shoot her, but then he didn’t, I don’t know why. I tore his head off. I don’t know what happened after that.”

Gabriel continues to regard him with shock and grief and agonizing guilt, not sure if Christian will want his comfort, or spurn him as he must feel that he very richly deserves. Finally, however, he steps past Lucy and holds his arms out, and Christian crumples into them. He sobs too hard to make a sound, face buried in Gabriel’s shoulder, as Gabriel holds him as tightly as he possibly can and strokes his hair and rubs his back. “I’m so sorry,” he mutters, over and over. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Since the rest of the family is in shreds, barely awake, or having a breakdown, it is left to Lucy, William, and Cecilia to deal with the aftermath. The firedrake returns to Lucy, reduced from the size of a dragon to that of a large bird, and rejoins her, nestling into her heart like a small bright spot that is about the only thing keeping her going. William and Cecilia go to the village to retrieve Jack, then start to sweep up the broken glass and smashed, sooty timbers, trying to reckon how many repairs Sept-Tours is going to need. Lucy fights the urge to apologize. She was the one who started that fire, after all, and while others have done worse damage tonight, her own contribution is not inconsiderable. It seems like a thousand years ago that she and Flynn were together in their bedchamber, wrecked with transcendent lovemaking, drunk on each other, dazed and happy and lambent and laden with magic. Just as Flynn had to leave the present without being able to say a word to the unconscious Gabriel, Lucy wonders if the unconscious Flynn will leave here without being able to say a word to Gabriel. She hopes not, and yet. Hoping barely seems to count for anything.

The sun comes up slowly over the smoking house, the morning somehow coming, the world rushing mercilessly and impossibly onward. Lucy works until she finds herself on the floor with her legs no longer functioning, and is finally lifted upright by Gabriel, who looks almost as bad as she does. “My father is awake,” he says quietly. “In the solar. He is asking for us.”

Lucy isn’t sure if she can ever look Asher de Clermont in the eye again, but a wave of sick relief floods her at this confirmation that at least he is all right. Since she still can’t walk, Gabriel half-carries her down the hall and into the solar, where Asher has been propped up on pillows. Maria is next to him, feeding him more heartsblood, and she glances up fiercely at Lucy and Gabriel’s entrance, as if to inform them that they will turf her out at their own risk. Asher, however, pulls painfully back from her. “Dear heart,” he says. “I will keep. Go out and see to the rest of the family. I must speak to Lucy and Gabriel alone.”

Maria is clearly about to argue, but Asher gives her a look, in the way of long-married couples who can communicate reams of information without words. It is plain that it is still very much not what Maria wants to do, but Asher is the only person she will trust to make this call. After a long pause, she raises his hand to her mouth and kisses his knuckles. “I will come at once,” she says, half a promise and half a plea. “If there is need.”

“I know you will.” Asher turns his head to allow her to properly kiss him, and she clings close, their noses brushing, her fingers trembling where they touch his cheek. “I would not ask if it was not desperately important. Now go.”

Maria hesitates, kisses him once more, then gets to her feet and gathers her torn dress around her shoulders, with as much dignity as if presenting herself at court. With half a look at her eldest son, she withdraws, shutting the door behind her. The silence in the room is as loud as a hurricane.

“Well,” Asher says, making both Lucy and Gabriel jump. While his color is better, he definitely does not look as if he can fend off any more attacks for quite a while yet. “Gabriel. Do you wish to explain the night’s events to me, and to your sister-in-law?”

Gabriel cringes. Asher has spoken mildly enough to outward appearances, but his voice lashes like a whip and makes it plain that while he is willing to listen and understand what has gone on, he is very angry and more than a little heartbroken. He himself was just seriously wounded in the course of it, after knowing all along that he was destined to die at some point, and the look he turns on Gabriel, while restrained, is cold with ice and fire. “Well?” he repeats. “Do you even intend to account for this, or leave us, again, in mystery?”

“No.” Gabriel stops, clears his throat, and starts again. “No. My actions have been – nigh unforgivable. Apologizing cannot begin to be enough, but it is the only place to start. I am sorry. I had my reasons, but they were wrong, as were my decisions. I was frightened, and I was selfish, and I was evil – whether or not by deliberate intention, it is that evil which befell our house tonight. My good sister said that to me, and she was right. In everything that she said, she was right.”

Lucy glances at him, then away. She doesn’t know if she’s expected to forgive Gabriel now, and frankly, if Flynn doesn’t wake up, she isn’t sure that she can. She’s already struggling with the thought of doing it now, but that is what makes her think that she has to, she has to find a way somehow. Ever since 1762, it is always like this with Gabriel and Garcia, some essential damage at the core of them, ships passing in the night, always missing it when the other looks at them, thinking they are only looking at the ground. It has gone in dreary circles, disaster and violence, chaos and heartbreak, one remote from the other in body or heart or soul, when they have spent so long trying without success to find the way out of the darkness, back to the time when they were one, and they were happy. Lucy does not want that tragedy for them. Not again. And if she is the agent of that reckoning, her choices matter, as does her heart. Whatever she says or does will be part of it, and forever going forward.

When Asher makes another prompting sound, Gabriel sits down across from his father, as if he doesn’t trust himself to stand. Then he tells both of them what happened, all of it. Tells them about Past Flynn’s arrival, and how he conspired to hide him in the village, and their plan to force Lucy to use Ashmole 782 to save Christian. How that spectacularly backfired and has left this wrack of total devastation in its wake, how he does not know if things will ever be the same again, and he understands now, he understands. He knows exactly how Garcia felt coming from the future. He knows how Flynn’s past self became who he is, even as hard as both of them tried to deny it, felt that it could never be possible. “And yet,” Gabriel finishes quietly. “Even broken, lost, confused, frightened, angry, whatsoever else he was and is, the Garcia from the future is still a hundred times the man that I am.”

At that, both Asher and Lucy look at him, but Gabriel does not meet their gaze. He does not say it as if fishing for a compliment, for them to reassure him that of course, he is still wonderful (and frankly, he clearly knows that neither of them are about to say that). He says it as if it is the simple and honest truth, one of those that he has been trying so hard to deny and drown out, and he leans back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. “I would burn down the whole world for Garcia,” he says, barely audible. “I have never loved anyone in the way that I love him, and now I think that I have never known how, nor been the least bit good at it. Certainly I was never brave enough to properly say so, and now it is too late in any number of ways. If it is best that I have nothing more to do with him, with either of you, then I am prepared to accept that.”

Lucy looks at him. Gabriel’s hands have clenched on the arms of his chair, as if to hold himself together, but he lifts his chin and forces himself to meet her eyes. His lips are trembling, but he firms them and continues to look at her, quiet and raw and heartbroken. In his face, Lucy sees for the first time a glimpse of the Gabriel that they left behind, the man he could still become if he was given the chance, if he can somehow make it from here to there. She is unsure what to say, or how to answer him. On some level, there is sense in accepting the offer, and that cannot be easily disregarded. But she _knows_ how this goes. She _knows_ how Gabriel and Garcia let their estrangement spiral out of control for two hundred and fifty years, both bitterly regretting it but too proud to apologize first, hoarding grievances like a dragon with its gold, and ultimately to just as much hollow, empty result.

“You know,” Lucy says after a moment. “That’s not really my decision. After all, you’ll still have him – your Garcia – after we leave. You’ll still have the chance to make other choices. If you can’t make things up with the version of him that you really hurt, he hasn’t been able to make up with the version of you that he really hurt. Both times, you’ve just been left with a ghost. But if you want to fix it for real with Garcia, you have to let us save you in the future. I know that you said you didn’t want to be saved, that anything was better than waking up in that life. It’s – I don’t want to say it’s easy, or it’s good, or it’s right. But it’s what it is, and I have to ask you – if you really love him – to be brave enough to choose it anyway.”

Gabriel closes his eyes tightly. He doesn’t answer, and Lucy glances at Asher, wondering if she is overstepping her authority, taking his place as family mediator, or asking Gabriel the unthinkable, of accepting the future that he has been tearing the world apart to avert. “I – ” she starts helplessly. “We will – Asher, we’ll find a way to save you too, this doesn’t mean we’ve given up on you or Christian – ”

“My dear.” Asher reaches out and takes her hand. “You have already saved me tonight. I would not be here without your magic, and the future is neither impermeable nor unalterable. I was born in ancient Greece, you know. I was raised with the notion of the Fates, that all the days of your life were spun in advance and when your thread was cut, it was cut, and there was no way in which you could change it. All our tragedies told of how hard men tried to disbelieve or avoid or destroy a prophecy, and how it was brought about nonetheless. Oedipus put his eyes out, and Cassandra was cursed never to be believed. Yet in living so long, and having seen even the glories of Athens of old fade to dust, I no longer believe in such inexorability, such strict captivity of a man’s free will. Whatever choices we will make in the future, they have not yet been written. But it is a terrible, maddening burden to live for hundreds of years with the knowledge of how one thread of fate plays out, to obsess over whether each action is leading one closer to or farther away from it. And so, Lucy, I must ask you one more favor, however little right I have to do so. You can stay here so long as it takes you to finish the philosopher’s stone, or whatever else you need to do. But then when you and Garcia leave, whether to return to London or to your own time, you must remove our memories of you and everything about this visit. It is, I think, a necessary mercy.”

Both Lucy and Gabriel look at him sharply, but Asher raises a hand. It is clear that he has thought about this in detail, and does not intend to be denied. “Listen to me,” he goes on. “Through no fault of your own, the entire family has learned of a future that has not been kind to any of us, and it is impossible, as I said, to live that way, with that hanging knowledge, that Damocles sword. This is the only way to give us a fair chance, to allow us to live our lives without desperately running from the Minotaur in the labyrinth, only to tangle the thread and meet it face to face instead. That way, whatever happens, we will know that the toss was fair. It was neither good nor ill, neither poisoned by foreknowledge nor deformed by magic. We will go on as if you were never here, and thus, you yourself are absolved in any guilt of what your visit to the past has wrought. I want that for you too.”

“I – ” Lucy tries to speak, discovers that she can’t, and looks down. “I don’t want – what you and Garcia said to each other, everything that you told him – I don’t want you to forget that. I don’t…” She trails off. It seems terribly selfish, when Asher is clearly correct that this is the kindness of oblivion, of innocence restored, but still. “I don’t want you to forget me.”

“And I do not think I will. Not really.” Asher leans back, the morning sun catching a few fine threads of silver among the eternal darkness of his curls. “Nothing is ever truly lost, Lucy. Only changed. And of course, we do not know what will transpire. That is the point of this. There may come a day when you are able to give those memories back even to me. Besides, your Garcia will still remember. He will know that I met you, that we had this time together, that I offered my blessing to your marriage, and that I trusted you to give our family a chance. I have no doubt that you will be able to do it. You are the most extraordinary witch I have ever known.”

“You can’t – ” Lucy can only think that he’s lived almost three thousand years, has met countless creatures, and he can’t actually mean that she is the best witch of _all_. “That’s kind of you, but I’m sure I’m not the – ”

“The most extraordinary.” Asher looks up at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a soft smile. “And as my sons could tell you, I am not a man for hyperbole, nor for giving compliments where I feel them to be unearned. I hope we will meet again one day, whether in this time or another. You are my daughter by blood-right and marriage, and if it is in my power, I will be with you. I have asked Cecilia to forge a new seal to replace the one you broke – with the best of reasons, of course. Before you go, you will have it.”

Lucy opens her mouth again, still comes up with nothing, and shuts it. She tightens her grip on his hand, then leans forward to kiss his cheek, and Asher nods at her in gentle acknowledgement. Then he turns to his eldest son, who has continued to sit there in silence. “I believe you have an answer to give to her as well, Gabriel.”

“A – aye.” Gabriel’s voice is rusty, and he coughs. “I – I do, and I – Christ. I do. I do. I want you to save me in your future, whichever version of me it is and no matter what has happened. If I can help you, if there’s anything I can do to assist with the philosopher’s stone or – or anything else, you have only to say the word.”

“I need you to keep Garcia’s past self safe.” Lucy doesn’t know if they’re far enough apart to wake up, and it’s clear that they cannot survive another face-to-face meeting. They can’t take either Flynn far from the safety of Sept-Tours, and it will be a delicate balancing act. “And defend the place from Rittenhouse and whoever else is around. We’ll still need to find a way to get the rest of Ashmole 782.”

“I’ll do my best.” Gabriel looks up at her. “That has – not been very much, not recently, and indeed it has been in nothing but the wrong direction. But ask anything, and it is yours.”

“Thank you.” Lucy pauses. She could request any number of boons, or force much more stringent repayment for what he put her through, and yet, there is only one thing that occurs to her. “I want you to tell Christian the truth about what happened with this.”

Gabriel flinches. _“All_ of it?”

“No.” If the de Clermonts are going to lose their memories anyway, Lucy briefly considers the possibility of just doing it, but she doesn’t think Christian needs to hear it explicitly even if only to forget. “You don’t have to tell him absolutely everything, that he dies and when. But you need to tell him the rest, and you need to apologize to him, and you need to make clear that you’re going to listen to him and be what he needs from you. He loves you so much, and I know you love him even more. He worships you, but you’ve let him down so many times, and I just… one day, the time might come when he stops forgiving you for it. I don’t want that for you, or for him. And I know you don’t either. Not really.”

“No.” Gabriel blows out a slow, jagged breath, the way vampires sometimes do in moments of heightened emotion, reach for old human tics or instinctive releases. “Once again, you are correct, however little I may like to hear it. Christian should never have had to do what he did tonight. Kelley should never have been here, and it was my fault that he was. I should never have arrogantly abandoned Edward and Jack on the road, and now Edward has paid for it with his life. I have too many recent sins to easily count, but I do not forget that one.”

“I know.” Lucy looks at him, and for once, Gabriel looks back. It’s the first time that she’s regarded him without any fear, felt not the slightest apprehension about sitting with him, knowing for a fact that he is no more threat to her and will not go back on that word again. Given his just-concluded run of spectacularly bad decisions, that is strange, but still. “I have some too, you know.”

Gabriel laughs painfully, shaking his head. “No, my dear,” he says. “No, you remain the only blameless one of us all. Papa, if you will excuse me, I should let _Maman_ back in before she tears off my head too. As well, I need to speak to my son.”

With that, he gets up, lifts Lucy’s hand to his mouth to kiss, does the same to his father, and gives them both a nod, before he leaves the solar. Asher and Lucy sit there together in the sun, until Asher glances at her. “I think we should keep this decision between us,” he says matter-of-factly. “In regard to the memories. At least for now. I will tell my wife what she has the right to know, as ever. But for the others, however difficult it is for me to ask of both myself and you, let it lie.”

“All right,” Lucy says. “I – I trust you.”

“And I you, Lucy Preston.” Asher smiles. “Or if you prefer, Lucy de Clermont. You do have the right to that name now, and as long as you should wish it. If you will permit me a small word of fatherly advice, do not be frightened to marry my son. I have known him for many hundreds of years, and while his flaws may be numerous, the only thing greater than that is his love and devotion. So long as he lives, he will be utterly and always yours.”

Lucy looks back at him, and wishes that she had something more to say, something to truly explain to Asher how much she admires him and how huge and fragile and translucent her heart feels in her chest, spinning and spinning, like a coin flicked with a thumb. But she is beyond ordinary reality just now, and she thinks that he can sense it, that he understands. She leans over to kiss his cheek one more time, hears a soft noise at the door and can see that Maria would very much like to come back in now, and with that, she takes her leave.

Flynn has been carried up to their tower and settled in bed, and once Lucy steps into the room and shuts the door behind her, she undresses quietly and climbs in next to him, pulling his arm over her and nestling into his side. He still isn’t awake, and she is beginning to realize that he won’t be, not until they leave Sept-Tours at least. She is going to have to take him from his family without a farewell, removing their memories in the name of mercy, hope that he wakes again in London, and that he can understand the magnitude and the heartbreak and the desperate hope of what she has to explain to him. He does not get to see Asher and Christian again, at least not if nothing changes. He does not get to know why Gabriel betrayed him and nearly killed her. Not until some flickering point in the future on which it all hangs, the moment where they somehow manage to finish the philosopher’s stone, to return to their own time and risk the revelation of the full and final truth. Lucy is more heartsick than she can fit into herself, a grief that seems to expand out of her and lap at the walls like ocean waves, and it is only when she has spent herself in tears, curled against Flynn’s silent side, a cold comfort better than none at all, that she sleeps.

The rest of August slips past in this strange hinterland, this halfway-between, this waiting for a great moment that draws closer and closer, still as yet far away but rushing inexorably closer nonetheless. Lucy works night and day on the philosopher’s stone, assisted by Cecilia and Jack, who proves to be an unexpectedly useful errand boy. Gabriel keeps devoted guard over Flynn’s past self, who has been safely hidden in the village, and assists William in the patrols around Sept-Tours, one or the other of them on constant watch. Asher recovers from his wound, Maria remains constantly nearby, and Christian clearly does not quite know what to do with himself. He has been left deeply shaken both by killing Kelley and the revelation that this all turned on him, that he was the reason the situation blew up and left their family and home in such pieces. He is different, distant, older-looking, some of his perpetual youth and ebullience burned out of him into something sharper, darker, harder. He is not Gabriel or Garcia, nothing near the depths of what they have done and been, but he’s not the carefree young man he was before, either. Even if she takes his memories, Lucy thinks (and the thought has not ceased to stab her) he will never be the same.

Flynn remains asleep in the tower, which cannot fail to make Lucy think of Present Gabriel back in the twenty-first century, concealed in Liechtenstein. As ever, they have mirrored each other, bent on the same trajectory, until it is both of them who have to awake, in more ways than one, at the moment of truth. As much as she knows what to do with the philosopher’s stone, it is making good progress. The moment of their leaving Sept-Tours is drawing near, when she has to do what Asher asked, and she finds herself increasingly resisting. “You could come to London with us,” she says. “We still need to get the rest of Ashmole 782 from Rittenhouse. You could help with that. I wouldn’t need to make you forget until later.”

Asher gives her a wry smile, just visible in the dim light of the fire. It is a few days into September, the leaves are showing their golden undersides, and he can clearly sense the reason for her hesitance. “You will have to do it sooner rather than later, Lucy. And you must do it all at once, for all of us, otherwise it could leave some of us remembering one thing and the rest of us another. Besides, I have gone on this road with you as far as I can. It is time to trust yourself, and your own abilities. And I think you will agree that the de Clermonts’ involvement in this affair has produced, on the whole, a great deal more woe and trouble than was in any way necessary. It is possible that by ridding yourself of us and our particular sort of dramatics, you will in fact make much more speedy progress.”

Lucy’s instinct is to demur, though Asher _does_ have a very valid point that the involvement of the family has produced complications – not least this entire disaster – and putting off the moment of finality, stringing it along out of her own fear of letting go, is exactly the opposite of the lesson he is, in his gentle but unquestionable way, trying to teach her. He is reminding her that as far as they know, he will not be there when they return to the present, that he will still be dead, and he has to make sure that they remember how to fly alone. The depths of Asher de Clermont’s love for his family, and his determination to always do what is right no matter how hard it is, staggers Lucy a little, even as she understands more than ever what an awful, world-shattering thing it was to have torn away. “So you do trust us with that,” she says, in a small voice. He said he did, of course, but still. “You trust me.”

“I do.” Asher takes a sip of his wine. He is almost entirely mended, except for a lingering stiffness, and regular applications of Lucy’s healing magic have reduced the scar to only a faint raw spot, something for Maria to kiss in the privacy of their marriage bed. “By the way, I thought that you might wish to name your firedrake. She saved Sept-Tours for us, and as your familiar, you will need her more than ever in whatever war is to come. She, and all your magic, comes from your love and your compassion and your good heart, and you could call her Corra. It sounds like _Coeur,_ and I hope it will remind you of what you have to fight for.”

“Corra.” Lucy tries it out, the idea of giving a name to this magical creature that exists as part of her. She can feel a spark of recognition from that small warm spot in her chest, a reminder that even when Asher steps back, she will not walk forward alone. “I – I think so. Thank you. Is it possible that you can send a Knight of Lazarus to Prague, to retrieve Agnes and the rest of Garcia’s household that he left there? So they can await us in London.”

“Consider it done, my dear.” Asher drains the rest of his wine and gets to his feet. “If the philosopher’s stone is almost complete, you could set out for London on Monday.”

“Monday.” It’s Wednesday evening, and this looms uncomfortably soon. They’ll also have to be careful about traveling anywhere near Paris, since Henry IV of France is once more at war with the Catholic League, and they are holding the capital city of the kingdom in defiance of their monarch, who sits outside the walls in siege. Another crossing from Dieppe seems to be the safest option, but All Souls, November 1, is less than two months away. That is the absolute latest they can return to the present, they still need to get Ashmole 782 back and hide it, and Lucy forces down the impulse to blurt out that Asher is trusting her with too much, that they are destined to fail miserably without his help. “Are you sure?”

“I am,” Asher says, with great finality. “And I suspect you are suffering more than you wish to admit without Garcia, and it is more than time that the two of you were reunited. As well, we all want our own Garcia back, and our lives to finally begin to heal. I doubt you realize what an extraordinary thing you have done, Lucy. You have made the philosopher’s stone, the highest and most coveted achievement in all of alchemy, in not quite six weeks, almost entirely by yourself. Your strength, your bravery, your intelligence, your highest skill and deepest devotion, is in no sort of question. But it is not good for either man or woman to be alone. It is time, my dear. It is time for all of us. So. Monday.”

“Monday.” Lucy echoes it back, as if four short days can possibly be enough to cram in all the time she still needs with him, with all of them. But Asher is right. She misses Flynn so sorely that she can’t stand it, she would give anything to know for certain that he will open his eyes and wake up and live again once they leave, and she is making the philosopher’s stone for both him and Gabriel. They are the reason why failure is not possible.

The last few days at Sept-Tours pass, as is always the case, with maddening swiftness, no matter how much Lucy wishes it was otherwise. She is a timewalker, she is half-tempted to weave the strands backward, to make it slow, to make it stand still. But she must face up to the unknown future in the way that they all must, and all is arranged. There are two Knights of Lazarus deputed to escort her and Flynn as far as Dieppe, make sure that they are placed on a ship for London, and at that point, will be made to believe that they arrived there for some other reason. Lucy hopes beyond hope that Flynn will be awake by then, but she dreads the explanations that will have to follow. It isn’t as if she thinks he will blame her, not entirely. But it will not be easy, and she can only hope that he would have agreed to the same course of action. The price is still, and as ever, unbearable.

Early on Monday morning, it is cool and misty in the courtyard, the sun a rose-grey flush on the eastern horizon, as the entire family stands outside to see them off. Flynn is loaded into the wagon and the Knights sitting on the running board with the horses in hand, as Lucy, dressed for traveling, makes her farewells. The rebuilding of Sept-Tours is underway, and she looks at it, imprinting it onto her memory, wondering what it will look like when or if she returns here for a third time. Then she hugs Asher for as long as she can, curtsies to Maria and is allowed to kiss her hand, hugs Christian even longer, hugs William, hugs Jack – and, doing the same to Cecilia, greatly surprises her, but the chatelaine’s arms close fiercely around her and she does not say a word. Then at last, Lucy comes to Gabriel, who has been waiting almost shyly behind the others. They look at each other awkwardly, and finally he clears his throat. “Safe journey, my dearest,” he says. “In all ways that matter.”

“You too.” Lucy looks at him, then steps forward and throws herself into his arms, and Gabriel holds onto her so tightly that she cannot breathe and does not care. He swiftly, clumsily kisses her cheek, as she turns her head to do the same, and can taste the slow old salt of his tears. “I’ll see you again,” she whispers in his ear. “We both will. I promise.”

Gabriel doesn’t answer, but he shakes, ever so slightly. He hugs her once more, then sets her down on her feet, cups her face in his hands, and bends to kiss her forehead. He tries to say something else, but is too overcome by emotion to get it out. Instead he nods to her, and she does to him, and Lucy cannot help herself and runs to hug Asher and Christian one more time. The two of them go to the wagon to bid farewells to the unconscious Flynn, and then step back as if they must be strong enough to do it now. Lucy looks at them all as if she cannot have enough, and then gets up on the wagon, and says to the Knights, “Drive.”

They do as ordered. She is wearing the new seal that Asher gave her, and she is a de Clermont with full as much right to command them, and there is one last thing that she has to do. Once they have reached the bottom of the hill, Lucy raises both hands, wants to close her eyes but does not, and casts the spell.

It flows out from her, still part of her strong new magic but beginning to run shallow, like a river at the end of summer that has been baked dry in the heat and has only a finite amount left to give. She needs Flynn back, she needs him awake, she needs him with her, to renew the power of the alchemical wedding and all that it gives her – as Asher says, she cannot do it alone. But this, at least, Lucy Preston de Clermont does, and does not weep a single tear. She watches as the magic flows up through the trees, over the walls, and wraps them all in the soft blanket of forgetting, the balm of oblivion, the drink of the river Lethe in the underworld that soothes all the memories away. In a few hours, past Garcia will awake, and he will come home to a family pleased to see him and that has never known any differently, never remembered that anything unusual happened while he was gone, or that they ever met a strange witch named Lucy. The tears pour unchecked down her face, until Lucy can barely see through the stinging salt, but she does not flinch until the spell is done.

She looks up through the thinning trees, at the still-standing towers. As it has always done, as they always will, Sept-Tours and the de Clermonts will go on. The bones are strong, Lucy thinks. The damage is deep and raw and not easily mended, not for anything, but the bones are strong. That has to mean something. She has no choice but to believe it.

Lucy settles into the wagon, and turns her face away. She lifts her husband’s head into her lap, and touches the philosopher’s stone in her cloak, and raises her hood against the autumn wind, blowing brisk out of the north, where their ship awaits in Normandy. And so it is, for the penultimate and greatest move in this game, the toppled king and the white queen still standing on the board, that Garcia and Lucy de Clermont leave, at last, for London.


	21. Once Upon a September

London, at last. London, again, London, impossibly. London, rising out of the haze on the Thames estuary as the bargemen pole past Greenwich and mudlarks scamper on the exposed tidal flats, picking anything shiny from the weed and wrack and polishing it up to sell for a few coppers. The Palace of Placentia presides on the southern bank, though the royal standard is no longer flown from its towers; as the summer season ends and Elizabeth returns from her extravagant processionals, traveling around England and obliging her subjects to lodge and entertain her at great fuss and expense, the queen will take up winter residence in Whitehall. The thought makes Lucy remember how she and Flynn crashed in here on May Day before dawn, in the deserted deer parks of the meridian. She vividly remembers her first sight (and smell) of London, how utterly alien and overwhelming it was, a savaging, relentless assault that felt as if it could never be familiar or safe or sane. Now it’s almost a relief to see it again, something close to coming home. At least for now. The air is wet and chilly, and it is a fortnight until Michaelmas, the thirtieth of September. Six weeks left. If that.

Lucy’s hands tighten on the railing, and she tries to force down the anxiety at a constant low-level boil in her chest. They’re lucky that there wasn’t much trouble crossing the Channel, as this is the season for autumn storms, and when they landed at Gravesend, she took charge of the haggling and hiring of the bargemen. Not that they had much choice. The further they traveled from France, the more Flynn began to stir, to Lucy’s unutterable relief. But he’s still not very awake, and he hasn’t yet said anything. What if it’s Present Flynn, but with Past Flynn’s memories? Did her spell affect him too, since it was cast on his doppelganger while they were still close together? Does he remember her and what they were doing, or anything before the fire at Sept-Tours? Is there lingering physical or chronological damage from the encounter with his past self, and will he be all right when they return to the present? Or have things been changed to such a degree that Gabriel has inadvertently gotten his wish, and this version of Flynn technically never exists at all? If so, removing him from the shelter of this loophole, this bend in time that is – for now – isolating him from the effects of his own future, could be disastrous. Try to take him back to a place where he isn’t, and _poof._

Lucy has mostly been worrying about this, though she is also wondering who could help her get the rest of Ashmole 782. The Knights of Lazarus sent to Prague to retrieve Agnes and Flynn’s household should – hopefully – have arrived here with them, and while Lucy is leery of renewing acquaintances with Lady Beaton, two witches alone are not enough to match with Rittenhouse. She can’t count on Flynn being recovered sufficiently to fight, and it feels like stretching her luck to an absurd degree if she risks him like that again. All the other vampires in the city are under the purview of Father Hubbard, who is as likely to help them as he is to take up competitive ballroom dancing. The School of Night is a possibility, but Walter Raleigh and the others don’t have actual powers. If they’re talking fellow creatures, that leaves only daemons. To be precise, it leaves _two_ daemons, neither of whom are safe bedfellows or champing at the bit for further fruitful acquaintance. Guy Fawkes and Christopher _bloody_ Marlowe.

Lucy has turned it over and over in her head, but she can’t come up with any other options. Fawkes’ particular skill set might actually be useful in this case, but the trick is how to make use of that while not burning Ashmole 782, the fate just narrowly avoided (and it’s rather arrogant of her to presume that Rittenhouse can be destroyed by anything so commonplace as fire). As for Marlowe, she can maybe leverage him with one more favor on Garcia’s behalf, insinuate that she knows the truth about Henry de Prestyn’s death and how bad it could look if that entire scandal tumbles out. But Lucy wants to avoid blackmailing Kit if she can. For one, she knows what he’s done to protect Flynn, the lengths he went to hush it up, and for another, he’s still what you would call a frenemy. Gabriel did confirm that Kit is a royal spy, and if the chips are down and exposure is inevitable, he could decide to fall on his sword and incriminate Lucy first. Between the two of them, card-playing and candied violets shared with the latter aside, Elizabeth will be far more inclined to believe the former.

They’re coming up on the London docks, the hands scrambling to sling the ropes and knot them around the posts, and the pilot’s mate, who is about seventeen and has been making moony eyes at Lucy for the entire voyage, doffs his cap at her. “Almost ashore, mum. Nay more than the next Paul’s bell. Is your husband still poorly, then?”

“Aye,” Lucy says, wondering wryly if the kid was secretly hoping that Flynn had snuffed it and she might be back on the marriage market. “A ha’penny for thee and the other lad if thou wilt help me bring him up and hail a wagon.”

The mate nods and springs away, and Lucy is left to contemplate the ease with which she answered him. Her accent still isn’t sixteenth-century Elizabethan, but she’s learned enough of the intonations and vowel stresses that she doesn’t sound completely outlandish, and while she initially couldn’t use the _thees_ and _thous_ without feeling affected or pretentious, she barely notices them anymore. Even the smell doesn’t register as particularly odious, just… normal. She’s getting used to this place and time after all. Of course, just when they’ll have to leave, but it is not an inconsiderable accomplishment, and she’s proud of it.

The barge docks with a bump and a jolt, alongside the other tilt boat from Gravesend with its distinctive canvas awning, and the mates go below to fetch Flynn while Lucy pays the pilot. They argue over the inclusion of an extra sixpence in the final figure, but Lucy knocks him down to a groat, forks over the money, and accepts a hand up onto the slimy wooden quay. The mates appear topside soon thereafter, lugging Flynn, who is sufficiently compos mentis to look grumpy at their apparent lack of care for his invalid person. They convey him to a nearby wagon, Lucy acquires the services of the driver, and one large vampire is loaded into the bed, along with their trunks, a bushel of hay, and an ill-tempered chicken in a wicker cage. Flynn’s expression upon beholding his traveling companion makes Lucy laugh, and then almost cry with relief. It’s still him. It has to be.

She thanks the mates, pays the promised ha’pennies, and – not caring who it might shock to see a well-dressed lady sitting on the running board of a trader’s wagon – climbs up next to the driver and directs him coolly into the teeming midday chaos of the Strand. He keeps glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, clearly having no idea what to make of her, and Lucy feels no particular obligation to enlighten him. Technically, she could have levitated Flynn out of the hold herself and floated him home, but that would be conspicuously magical, and now that they are back in London, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell once more applies.

It takes the usual hour or two of fighting through the crowds, but they finally, _finally_ roll up before the gates of the Old Lodge, and Lucy is almost as happy to see Robert Parry as she was to see Asher at Sept-Tours. She and the faithful steward exchange greetings, she indicates that the master of the house is in the rear of the vehicle and will need to be carried in, and when Flynn is lifted down, the chicken’s cage is discovered to contain only a bloody clump of feathers. The driver is indignant. “How now! Wherefore the bird?”

“The chicken died.” These are the first words Flynn has uttered in almost two months, and his voice is low and hoarse, rasping in his chest like granite. He pauses to cough, as Lucy notices the streak of blood on his chin. He’s probably starving, weak and disoriented, and draining the chicken dry is the equivalent of a single crappy fast-food burger after weeks of hunger. Nonetheless, as she catches his eye, she can finally see that it’s him, it’s _him,_ and her knees almost dissolve. She has never been so close to losing him as she was just then, and she can still only barely trust that she hasn’t.

Having paid the driver an extra few pennies to compensate for the sudden demise of his chicken, Lucy follows the grooms inside, greets Parry and the servants, is informed that Agnes is at the market but will be happy to see them when she returns, and then asked if she wishes to review any candidates for the position of lady’s maid. Meg, Lucy is assured, has been decently interred in a churchyard in Prague. Some money has reached her sister and the children in Islington. All very proper, and what happened very sad, but since m’lady should not be without decent attendants, they are altogether ready to procure her a new one.

Lucy tells them that she’ll think about it later, and once more flashes back to arriving here for the first time and her introduction as Lady Clairmont, the fuss and panic it caused, how ill-fitting and false the role felt. Now the servants are relieved to see her safe and clamoring for her word on household matters, and Lucy stays just long enough to sort the more pressing items. When Parry asks about Lord Asher and Lord Gabriel, Lucy tells him that the rest of the family has stayed in France. They do not expect to see them again soon.

Her voice catches, and she tries to sound matter-of-fact. Fortunately, Parry knows that it is not his place to ask questions (though he does look relieved at being shot of Gabriel, for which he cannot at all be blamed) and once the most urgent domestic dilemmas are dealt with, Lucy escapes upstairs to the master bedchamber, lets herself in, and shuts the door behind her. She tilts her head back, running her hands over her face, and takes a deep breath. God, this is strange. Not how it was before, but now in an entirely new way.

“Lucy?” a voice says from the bed. _“Moja ljubav,_ why the hell are we in London?”

Right. There’s a lot of explaining that needs to be done, and a lot of other things as well. Lucy shucks her cloak and hood and shoes, pads across the freshly rush-strewn floor, and climbs up next to her now-mostly-awake husband, who is looking around with an expression of mingled critique and confusion. Flynn is clearly only now becoming aware that he has been out for a significant chunk of time and missed multiple major developments, and he cuts his eyes at her in concern, scanning for injuries. She shakes her head. “No, no. I’m fine, really. I just – there’s a – there are some things you need to know.”

With that, she does her best to recount everything that happened from the moment he charged off into the flames at Sept-Tours. Flynn listens without interrupting, though that may also be because he still isn’t up to much talking, and though Lucy glances periodically at his face, she can’t read much in his expression. She falters somewhat at telling him that she had to erase his family’s memories, that they had to leave before he had a real chance to say goodbye to Asher and Christian (and, for that matter, the rest of them, though they’re the ones he has no guarantee of ever seeing again). She made the philosopher’s stone, or at least as much of it as she could. Gabriel feels terrible for what he did, and for once, Lucy believes him. For what it matters, Gabriel agreed that he wanted to be saved, and there, if anywhere, is where this will be mended. And that now they’re back in London, in final, slender hope of getting the rest of Ashmole 782 back, hiding it, and somehow leaving before All Souls. It’s not much time. At this point, a month and a half. She wishes it was more, but it’s not. She’s done her best. She’s done everything she can possibly think of. She just hopes it’ll be enough.

Flynn remains silent when she finishes, though any number of thoughts are visible in his eyes. Finally he says, voice still rusty, “This isn’t your fault, Lucy. No matter what else has gone on, nobody could blame you.”

“I do.” Lucy looks down at their hands, their entwined fingers. “I had to get away from – well, from you, and Kelley would have killed everyone in Sept-Tours. He nearly did. But I still set the house on fire, and – “

“Not your fault.” Flynn pauses again to cough. “I wish I could say that my past self wasn’t always such an idiot, but I’m afraid I can’t be sure of that. Did he hurt you?”

Lucy is startled by the ferocity in his voice, as if nothing matters except her answer to this question. As if he will take it personally if some version of him did something to her, wounded her or wronged her, and will not absolve himself of that responsibility even if it was four hundred years before knowing her. Lucy traces her fingers across the back of his hand, up the rough dark fur of his forearm, the graceful bones of his wrist, the lines of his long fingers. “No,” she says. “No, you – you didn’t hurt me, not really. You – he – grabbed me and dragged me around and were planning to take me to the library for whatever grand plan the two of you had cooked up, but then Kelley turned up and everything got much worse in entirely new ways.”

Flynn makes a derisive noise in his throat, as if he’s not proud of the fact that his past self was prevented from such unchivalrous nonsense only by the advent of an even bigger problem. He also had an unsettled reaction to hearing that Christian killed Kelley, and clearly can’t decide whether to ask for more details, or feel that the ones he has are enough. The subject hangs in the air, but both it and Asher are too painful to be broached openly, and since he can’t tell Lucy that it’s fine that he had to leave without a proper goodbye, since they both know it’s not, he says nothing. Then he says, “Did someone punch Gabriel, at least?”

“I slapped him pretty good.” Lucy manages a laugh. “Like I said, I – I think I managed to put the fear of God into him. Or at least the fear of something.”

“Fear of you, more like.” Flynn turns his head to regard her with a wry, tender smile. “About the only thing that would be likely to work, I think.”

Lucy starts to say something, stops, then picks up his hand with both of her own, curling her fingers around it and holding on tightly. “I missed you so much,” she says, all the tears that she has dammed up and disregarded finally threatening to burst free. “I was – I was so scared that you – that you wouldn’t wake up, or that you wouldn’t be the same, or – so much. I still don’t know what happened, but you – I just need to know you’re here right now.”

“As far as I know.” Flynn’s voice is soft, and he reaches up with his free hand to brush his knuckles across her cheek. “And while I don’t know what else might happen, I’ve lived a long life, and I’ve been in plenty of stupid scrapes before. I’ll be with you as long as I can, _moja ljubav,_ you know that. Hmm?”

“I know.” Lucy kisses his fingers, pressing them to her mouth, and then decides that he probably needs some more substantial testament of her love than sweet words. Thinking of Maria doing the same for Asher, she unbuttons the collar of her dress, pulls out the kerchief, and unlaces her stays, baring her breasts. While Flynn’s eyes light with a frank admiration of the view, he looks as if he’s about to caution her that he is in no shape for such diversions. But Lucy lowers herself closer so that he can get his mouth to the vein above her heart, and he pauses, then flexes out his fangs, makes a faint spitting motion as if to banish the taste of chicken, and sinks them in.

Lucy utters a small sound of surprise, since while he’s fed on her several times by now, those have always been in the accustomed manner, from the throat, and generally have been very pleasurable. This feels different – not painful, exactly, but a more heightened contact, a deeper sacrifice of blood and soul, a greater transparency of heart and mind, which must be the reason it is more efficacious at healing a wounded vampire, but cannot be done or given lightly. It gets somewhat easier as they go, as Lucy remains on all fours above him and Flynn lifts his head to suckle from her. At last, he makes a small noise and pulls back, a few drops shining scarlet on his chin. “Mm. That’s good. That’s enough. Come here, then.”

He pulls her down and licks the marks closed as he usually does, the light pressure of his tongue on her breast enough to send gooseflesh rippling along her body. She knows he needs rest and recuperation, but she needs _him,_ and it is going to be hell to wait a decent interlude of time until then. Flynn utters a low chuckle and settles her more firmly atop him, his hands on her hips, and arches himself up against her, half-hard between her legs. “You’re welcome to ravage my feeble carcass if you want, Lucy,” he says in her ear. “No promises that I’ll actually be any good, though.”

Lucy kisses him instead of answering. She shifts position, unlacing his breeches and drawing him out stiff and silky in her hand, stroking him to full hardness with a few coy swoops of her thumb. Flynn huffs a laugh against her neck, so that she can feel the curve of his smile pressed into her skin, the way his hand comes up to cup the back of her neck. He can clearly tell that she’s almost possessed with the need to do this, as if the exchange of heartsblood has once again bound them on a deeper and more resonant level, as if their connection is a matter of instinct and necessity, a renewing and rejoining. Lucy hikes up her own skirts and straddles him, and both of them sigh as she guides him into her. They come to rest face to face, as she spreads her knees and settles him more comfortably, and he settles his hand on the small of her back and wraps his other arm around her shoulders. They lie there without moving for several moments, simply enjoying the quiet, raw intimacy, his small stirs inside her, the relief and release of finally having two separate things forged back into one. At last, Flynn kisses her ear again and murmurs, “Not going to break, you know.”

Lucy lets out a small giggle, interpreting this as a hint that they can get on with the next stage of things and it is unfair of her to taunt him for too long, but she still doesn’t want to overexert the poor dear after six weeks of unconsciousness. They continue to move slowly, luxuriantly, as she can feel a definite change in the magic that enmeshes them. They don’t glow outwardly, as they did during the alchemical wedding proper at Sept-Tours, but it vibrates and illuminates in her bones, in her blood, in the way she can feel both Flynn’s pleasure and her own, and the places where the damaged pieces of him are knitting back to wholeness. It makes something new, it forges a different kind of bond, lush and verdant as a walled garden in a desert oasis, a perfect and private little sanctuary. Lucy rides him thoroughly, enjoying the feeling of him sliding in and out of her and then back still deeper, hitting a sweet spot with measured and methodical thoroughness. He reaches up to drag the pad of his thumb over her clit, matching time with his thrusts, and she grinds on him with intent deliberation, shivers of delicious friction rippling out from her core. Enforced celibacy had its uses when she was working day and night, but she’s more than ready for it to be over.

Flynn seems to have the same thought, and Lucy’s sighs turn to whines and gulps and gasps as he picks up the pace, raises a knee and rolls them over, gripping her hands and pushing them over her head. By the time they reach the edge, all notions of taking it slowly have been forgotten, and they collapse in the sheets, limbs entwined and mouths open, Lucy’s hair spilling loose on the pillow and her fingers clasped on the back of Flynn’s head, as he steals an extra nip from her throat to give her the combined pleasure of the feed and the orgasm. She shudders, moans and then screams, and forgets her own name for several minutes.

By the time they untangle themselves, it’s early evening and not really worth getting dressed again. Lucy has supper sent up, and eats at the desk in her shift and shawl, as Flynn watches her from the bed with a soft-eyed, devoted grin. “Well, you’re certainly the best nurse I’ve ever had,” he remarks. “Do you want me to go see about wrangling Kit tomorrow? If you’ve had enough of him, that is.”

“No, I should do it.” Much as Lucy loves Flynn, she doesn’t trust him to grasp Kit’s complicated feelings toward him, how that has driven his actions even as he intended that nobody should find them out, and never uttered a word, even when knowing might have caused them to look on him more favorably. Lucy isn’t eager for a return to the mercurial, tempestuous Marlowe either, but if he and Gabriel managed to dispatch an entire mob of creatures hungry for Flynn’s head, he has to have some idea of how to set a trap for Rittenhouse, and ensure that it could effectively spring. Besides, she might understand him better now. At least, she hopes.

They get into bed again and fall soundly asleep, and do not stir until the six o’clock bells the next morning. The city is covered in a drizzly grey river fog, which – although not uncommon for London at any time of year – underscores the fact that it is mid-September, and the reminder drives Lucy out of bed and into her clothes, much as she would like to stay and cuddle with Flynn. It’s rare enough that she’s up before he is, and she kisses his brow, tells him to stay out of trouble, and leaves the house.

Sound is at once muffled and eerily echoing in the murk as she makes her way down the labyrinthine lanes, hood over her head and basket on her arm. She knows London fairly well by now, though if she was recognizable as Lady Clairmont, she should have Karl, long-suffering stick man, to ensure her virtue. But since she’s dressed as a common maidservant, she has some measure of anonymity, though anyone who’s seen her before would probably know her, and some rumor could get started. For that matter, Lucy wonders, how will she make all of London forget Lord Clairmont’s scandalous witch wife? Maybe they will decide, once she disappears, that it was clearly a brief and ill-judged liaison on his part and good manners forbid it from being mentioned again. Or perhaps fake memories? The de Clermonts currently believe that the partial burning of Sept-Tours and the death of Edward the valet were the work of the Huguenot-hunting mob, and that Jack is just some orphan Christian picked up during one of his excursions to London and whom they tolerantly allowed to stay. Past Flynn’s infirmity is down to some adventure he had in Dalmatia, and Asher’s near-death was some passing, unimportant mishap. Lucy has tried to think of as much as she can, cover all bases, so they don’t suddenly wonder why they can’t remember something that seems important. It is still something she doesn’t like to dwell on.

It is too early to call on Kit, since playwrights aren’t exactly known for leaping up with the larks, and Lucy thinks it best to catch him at as well-disposed an hour as possible. She goes to the Royal Exchange and buys breakfast, then decides to make a stop at St. Paul’s and see if there is any news to be had. If anything large or noteworthy took place while they were away, or if there are strange stirrings now, this is the quickest way to hear of it.

Lucy crosses the courtyard, thinking of how she was frightened to be more than a few feet from Flynn when they first arrived and that she is now cruising around by herself like a pro, and steps into the sanctuary, busy with the morning walkers. She glances around in case her old friend, Weasel Misogynist Man, is around here and holding a grudge, but she doesn’t see him. There seems to be nothing to do but pick a companion and jump in, but as she’s trying to decide whether the dandy in the striped bloomers or the Yorkshireman in the tall black hat would be a more useful source of information, someone touches her elbow. “Mistress?”

Lucy starts around for several reasons – not least because the word has been spoken in a modern American accent. Something about the voice catches her, not in fear, but in ancestral familiarity, something remembered just below the level of conscious recognition. She smells something familiar too, Imperial Leather soap and ink and cigarette smoke, and she’s just had time to think in shock that that’s how her father used to smell, when she looks up at the man. He’s dressed like a proper late Elizabethan, though his ruff and doublet are a few decades out of fashion, and even though she hasn’t seen his face since she was eight, there’s no mistaking it, searing through her like a bolt of grounded lightning. Her tongue freezes to the roof of her mouth, and all she can do is stare. Finally, croakily, she breathes, _“Dad?”_

Henry Wallace – as it is indeed, it’s him, neat brown beard and a slight squint that means he isn’t wearing his glasses, presumably in the name of period authenticity – stares back at her. The wheels are clearly cranking in his head just as wildly, as he takes her in from head to toe and must experience that same moment of wrenching, visceral recognition. “Lucy?” he says, sounding faint. “Sweet bean, what – ”

“What are you doing here?” Lucy echoes, so they chorus it together, not sure who is more stunned. She can’t wrap her head around it in the least. _Sweet bean –_ yes, that was his pet name for her, that’s what he used to call her. They have been so wrapped up in the emotion of seeing Flynn’s father who is no longer alive in the present that – aside from Lucy’s determination to solve the mystery of Henry de Prestyn’s death and get justice for another murdered Henry – she didn’t think, ever, about seeing her own. Why would she? Henry Wallace isn’t immortal. He was born in 1952, and he was killed in 1991. There is no way he would ordinarily be in 1590 – but then, he too is a timewalker. Lucy inherited the gift from him, and he from his several-times-great-grandmother, Amelie. She was pregnant with her last child, the son who would become this Henry’s ancestor, the last time Lucy spoke to her. Did Henry Wallace become aware of possible deviations in his own timeline and set out to prevent them? Did he have another errand, or – or what? What year did he leave from? Can she save _her_ father, if not Flynn’s? Should she, or can she, or – or –

“Come on,” Henry says quietly, when Lucy remains rooted to the floor. “This way. I – I think it’s best we don’t draw attention.”

Completely gobsmacked, Lucy can think of nothing to do but follow his advice. They duck into a side chapel, with bare walls where statues of saints and precious woodwork and gilding have been ripped out, and a dirty red cushion left on the grimy marble seems to indicate that one of the local St. Paul’s prostitutes might use this as her workspace. They sit down on the steps, both of them still attempting to get started on any of a thousand questions, and failing comprehensively. Finally Lucy manages, “What – what year did you come from? Back home, you – so what? How old am I? What’s – what’s going on?”

“I left from March 1990,” Henry says. He’s still staring at her, since for a man who left his seven-year-old daughter just hours ago, encountering the adult version of her in the same year he traveled to far in the past has to be more than a little shocking. “It’s – it’s complicated.”

“March 1990.” Lucy looks at her hands where they grip her knees. The fact of suddenly having a lost parent before you again, alive, breathing, with the chance to blurt out all the questions you have languished without answers for so long – it’s huge and strange and desperate and impossible all at once. “So you took me to Venice in November 1989, a few months ago, you and Mom. Where I was tested for magic, proclaimed ordinary, and you became confused and suspicious. So then you decided to spellbind me, for my own protection, and let me think I wasn’t actually any kind of witch at all.”

She hates that this is the first thing she’s saying to her dad after years and years, when she wants to conjure some faded childhood memory of them getting ice cream or him patiently reading a history book to her or anything else, not to demand answers about something that Denise and Michelle explained back in New York, as best they could. For his part, Henry flinches as if she’s hit him with something heavy. There’s a long pause. Then, not as a question, he says, “You know about that.”

“Yeah.” Lucy doesn’t want to say outright that he never gets a chance to tell her in person, that it won’t be taken off until she’s thirty-four and has already done uncounted damage at driving her away from the creature world, that he and Mom are going to die next summer and leave her an orphan, but the bitterness and the pain and the abandonment bubbles up nonetheless. “I know about that.”

Henry’s mouth tightens, and he doesn’t answer. He clearly senses that it is no use to justify the decision to an adult Lucy many years past any moment where there is anything to be done about it, but he looks worn and drawn and shamefaced anyway, which makes a wriggle of guilt squirm in Lucy’s gut. He did – he did love her, Dad. He _does._ Her relationship with Carol has always felt fraught and delicate and contested even in absentia, negotiated through those demanding letters and that unrelenting expectation of perfection, but she doesn’t have any of those conflicted feelings when she remembers her father. Having just erased the terrible knowledge of their future from Flynn’s family, she doesn’t know if she can go telling Henry about his now, but the compulsion is almost overwhelming. If she just _tells_ him, and he makes a different choice, and they don’t go to Ukraine in June 1991 – Lucy might grow up with her parents, un-spellbound, a confident witch who knew about her connection to Ashmole 782 all along and was prepared to solve the mystery. She might have far fewer questions, or at least more certainty of their answers. She might be a different Lucy, a better one, a stronger one. And yet, again. Everything would change.

For his part, Henry clearly is not about to ask any of these questions, the ones that indicate some coming storm, some moment of reckoning. They look at each other again, and he raises his hand, brushing her chin, as Lucy feels a small shock at the solidness of his fingers, the ordinary, affectionate nature of the gesture. It’s the first time her father has touched her in almost thirty years, as he turns her head to get a better look, as if in some unspoken knowledge he will not have another chance to see her as a grownup. “You’re beautiful, sweet bean,” he says, a bit croakily. “My baby girl. And if you’re here for the same reason I am – ”

“Why are you here?” Lucy holds her knees even harder, still half-expecting him to vanish if she blinks too hard. “Did something – go wrong?”

“I’m here because your mother thinks that you have a connection to a manuscript known as Ashmole 782.” Henry rubs his eyes, trying to collect himself. “It’s something we’ve suspected for a while, but what happened in Venice made it urgent. Your mother saw that illumination of the white queen and the red king – we don’t know who the man was, but the page had your name on it. _Lucia._ So since this was the year we thought the manuscript was produced, I was supposed to come and discover the lay of the land. I take it your presence here means that she’s right.”

“Something like that.” Lucy pauses, then says, “Mom takes those pages and puts an enchantment on them. She hides them in Denise and Michelle’s house, since it stands on the spot of the one that used to belong to our ancestress, Amelie Wallis, after she came to the New World in 1647. That’s where I find them, along with a letter from her where she said that I had to forgive you, both of you. There’s more, but – yes.”

Henry looks at her sharply. “Do you have the manuscript? Now?”

“Not exactly.” Lucy debates how much detail she should go into. “We have about half, and we need to get the other half back from someone who definitely shouldn’t have it. We can’t bring it back with us, we need to hide it here, or the entire continuum of events around it is disrupted. In short, I’m connected to it in the present, I’m the only one who can find it, because I already hid it in the past. I’ve unlocked it and I’ve used it and I’ve done fairly major spells from it, so I guess it just… goes into dormition, or something. Waiting for me to be born in the future, and to find it again.”

Henry blinks. “We did always know that your magic was special. Your mother was never able to get her hands on the full physical copy, she could only track down fragments and facsimiles and a few record books and reproductions. You must know much more about it now than I do, but Lucy, I… I just hope it’s what you wanted.”

Lucy has to take a moment to think about that. She is aware of the irony in the fact that by having this conversation, by telling her dad that he’s right about her connection to Ashmole 782, by confirming that she herself comes here to find it and use it, she is sealing her own fate. Henry will return to 1990 and tell Carol, and Carol will cast the spell to hide the Ashmole pages in the Christopher house, and then they will die and young Lucy will grow up orphaned and spellbound, completely unaware of this sequence of events that led to her being bound to Ashmole 782 long before she ever called it up in the Bodleian. There is so much she _could_ say to Henry, about all the missing years, all the time they didn’t have, about how she cried herself to sleep on her sixteenth birthday after reading Mom’s letters and how she wondered so often if her parents really loved her. She understands Flynn’s experience of dislocation and disbelief more than ever, the blessing and curse of encountering a lost loved one out of time and out of place. She almost wants to shout at Henry, but what good would that do? He’s trying his best. They all are. They just don’t know.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “The way my life ultimately worked out – I’ve done all right. I’ve found things I would never give back, and people, and power. It’ll… I’ll survive, Dad. I’ll be okay. No matter what, there’s that.”

Henry looks at her unsteadily, eyes too bright, as this must be no small thing to hear from your grownup daughter many years ahead of when you last knew her, and when you have just made a decision that she is demonstrably angry about. At last, Lucy wavers a little, cracks, and he reaches out to hug her tightly. They sit there in silence, his chin on her head, as Lucy shakes and shakes but does not quite give into the breakdown. Then he says, “You find out what – or who – the red king is, I take it? What kind of guy is he? Your mom thought he was a witch, but if the two of you are… I can’t help being curious.”

Lucy gives him the fish eye, even though he has all of her teenage years to make up for, the chance that he never got to interrogate her boyfriends. Though if Henry thinks he’ll pull the overprotective father act on Flynn, that – that will be entertaining, if probably not for the reasons that Henry thinks. “Yes,” she says. “I know who he is.”

“And you’re…” Henry looks as if he wants some information on this, but not too much. “You’re, uh. You’re more than just – you know?”

“Dad,” Lucy says tolerantly. “If you want to know more about him, just say so.”

“Yes. Well.” Henry harrumphs. “Honey, I just left you as a seven-year-old in your Little Mermaid pajamas. Pretty sure I want to scope this guy out on principle. I promise, I won’t punch him in the nose unless he’s really a jackass.”

Lucy laughs despite herself, and gives him a hand up, as they leave St. Paul’s together and step out into the morning traffic. Henry glances at her sidelong as she navigates through the crush, leading the way through winding streets and tight-crammed alleys, ducking under overhanging roofs and across muddy squares. “You’ve been here for a while.”

“A few months.” Lucy nods at the puddle he’s about to step into. “Don’t do that, they can be almost a foot deep.”

Henry smartly pulls back, skirts around it instead, and sticks close at her elbow as they battle up the Strand. When they’re a few doors down from the Old Lodge, it occurs to Lucy that while Henry might not be as obsessed as Carol with promoting the purity and continuation of their prominent-old-witch-family bloodline, he still abides by the Covenant as the law of the land. As far as he knows, interspecies relationships are completely verboten, he has never met or had any kind of sustained interaction with a vampire, and discovering that his little girl is married to one is going to be – well, it’s not the sort of thing you just spring in the moment and assume that everything will be fine. As the gates creak open and Henry’s eyes flick to the de Clermont sigil, Lucy says, “Dad, I – you saw the alchemical wedding page, right? Do you remember what that was? An attraction of opposites, a union that was taboo or somehow forbidden in its nature?”

“Alchemy wasn’t my field of specialty.” Henry frowns; he was a historian of eighteenth-century military theory, merchant exchanges and trade routes in the pre-1776 American colonies, and was developing an interest in productions of space and place in premodern cartography.. “Sweetheart, is this – is he – I mean, are you sure he’s – ”

Whatever he’s about to ask is cut off, as Garcia Flynn de Clermont emerges in his full and formidable six-foot-four scowling vampire glory. He’s up and dressed, at least, and looks much better. At the sight of Lucy with a strange man in tow, he stops short. “What? Who’s this? Looks like a – ”

“Garcia,” Lucy says, before he can finish that sentence (probably for the best). “This is – this is Henry Wallace. My…” She stops. “My father. Dad, this is Garcia. My… my husband.”

Between the two men, it’s hard to say who is more stunned. Flynn, of course, knows perfectly well that Lucy’s father is long dead, and Henry himself is surveying Flynn with a look as if this is the exact sort of individual not in the least designed to reassure a father about his daughter’s taste in men. There is a very awkward pause. Then Flynn says, “Aren’t you dead?” just as Henry says, “So you’re a vampire?”

“Guys,” Lucy interrupts, rather loudly. She is not about to enable some sort of macho pissing contest, though she knows that Flynn would be very offended at any notion that she is his property and needs to be formally acquired from her father. Henry _is_ dead and has been for many years, after all, so it’s not like he can start throwing his weight around about her relationship choices. She can allow a few moments for the shock to percolate, but anything else needs to be nipped in the bud. “I’m glad you got to meet each other.”

That reminds them of the fact that she is standing right there and has a vested interest in them being polite, and Flynn coughs. “Mr. Wallace,” he says, lingering over the name as if in prompt expectation of an explanation. “It’s a true honor to meet you. I didn’t know it was possible.”

“Ah… yes.” Henry is valiantly attempting to manage his face, though it’s still going on a rather interesting journey. He glances at Lucy in search of help, and she stares stubbornly back. “That family crest on the gate, you’re not…? One of… _those_ de Clermonts?”

“Are there others?” Flynn raises a sardonic dark eyebrow. Lucy didn’t think there was much chance of him apologizing for it, and it’s not that she wants him to, but there _is_ the fact that Henry knows Maria de Clermont as a remorseless witch-killer, and is understandably not terribly enthused about the fact that she is now his daughter’s mother-in-law. “And for your information, my family all know about and approve of Lucy. So if you were sitting there thinking that we were keeping her for sport, we’re not.”

He says it defiantly, but there’s a painful flicker in his eyes. After all, the de Clermonts no longer _do_ know about Lucy, and while they did become fond of her before the memory erasure, if they met her again now, it would be back to square one. Not that Henry needs to be clued in on the fine details, but it’s both the truth and a lie at once, and Flynn looks away, as if unwilling to reveal this vulnerability before an outsider, even one who is technically family. He also knows about Lucy’s deeply conflicted feelings over her parents, their choice to spellbind her, everything they never got around to telling her, how she has felt estranged from the witches ever since, and he aims a pointed look at Henry’s back, then at Lucy, as if silently asking if he should kick his ass just in case. Lucy lets out a small snort and shakes her head. Men. You can’t take them anywhere. Or, it seems, any _when._

Nonetheless, with the entry shock smoothed over, the visit improves somewhat. Henry is invited in and furnished with refreshment, and he sips it as Lucy sits across the table from him. He and Flynn have progressed to being rather excessively and formally polite to each other, though at least there are no fisticuffs, and both of them are clearly making an effort for Lucy’s sake. Henry once more offers the explanation of where and when he has come from, and Flynn considers this narrowly. Like Lucy, he has to admit that it makes a sort of twisted, full-circle sense, that everything that will happen with them is because it has already happened, and is waiting to be rediscovered. At last, he says, “So that’s that? You’re going to go home, back to your own time, and tell your wife about this?”

“Should I not?” Henry looks as if he hopes this is not a reflection on Flynn’s own policy of telling, or not telling, his wife about things. “Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“Yes,” Flynn says. “But your wife isn’t like mine.”

Lucy shoots him a look, as if to say that badmouthing your mother-in-law never goes well, and that if they start getting into these complications, she may have to erase her own father’s memories too. Besides, no matter her feelings on Carol, it seems slightly disrespectful to talk about her like this, when Lucy would give almost anything for her mother to have come on this visit too. Unlike Asher, who understood his fate almost at once, she doesn’t know if Henry does or not. He has to have guessed something, doesn’t he? Just by the way she’s reacted to him and the clear implication that the decision to spellbind her won’t be resolved in his lifetime? Or maybe he has decided that he will not ask, or make her have to answer. The example of Gabriel and Christian is all the cautionary tale necessary on why it’s a dangerous idea for time travelers to inform family members of the moment of their deaths.

Just then, Lucy thinks of something. She doesn’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but it might furnish tangible proof of the de Clermonts’ acceptance of her, and maybe it can allow Henry to have some kind of effect on the future, one thing he can do before he’s gone. She gets to her feet and says, “Wait here.”

With that, she goes upstairs, and unlocks the strongbox that contains the most valuable things they have brought from Sept-Tours: the Ashmole pages, the philosopher’s stone, Lucy’s journal, and the two portrait miniatures of her and Flynn, with the notes from Asher exhorting the recipient to help them however they can. Lucy lifts them out and carries them downstairs, where Flynn and Henry are watching each other like a pair of fencers expecting the other to try something clever. She clears her throat, and they jump. “Here,” she says. “Dad, I’d – I’d like you to take these. When you go.”

Henry accepts them with a furrowed brow. “What are these?”

“They were a gift,” Flynn says. “From _my_ father, Asher de Clermont. Go on, look at the letters. In the back.”

Henry undoes the catches, removes the notes, and reads them with an inscrutable expression. At last he puts them down, then folds them up and slips them back into the frames. “I see,” he says. “I have heard of Asher de Clermont, but didn’t he die? A while ago. World War II?”

“He’s still alive right now.” Flynn pauses. “Like you.”

Henry glances at him askance, as does Lucy, but Flynn’s voice isn’t confrontational or angry. It is softly and desperately sad, as if willing Henry to understand that no matter how little he may care for Flynn himself, both Henry Wallace and Asher de Clermont will wish more than anything that they could be there for their children, they will not be, and they need to do what they can, while they can. Henry starts to say something, stops, and weighs his words. Then he says, “So you two – you’re married?”

Flynn and Lucy also start to answer and stop. Then Lucy says, “We’re engaged, technically, but we’ve had the alchemical wedding, and Asher gave us his blessing, and we – well, at some point, we’ll have a ceremony. But yes, in all ways that matter, we’re married.”

Henry chews that over, as Lucy watches him tensely. She is, after all, an adult woman and does not need his permission or his blessing to go on living the life she has had without him for many years, but she wants it anyway. The latter, if nothing else. She wants him to understand, she wants to take something from this miraculous meeting, the chance that she too has had to see beyond the veil. She told him that she was going to be okay, and that meant something to him. But she meant that she would be okay with Flynn, that he’s an indivisible part of her, and she wants her dad to understand that. Any daughter would. Henry looks down at the portraits again, takes a deep breath, and says, “All right.”

Lucy wants to ask if he is in fact going to tell her mother, and then decides that she likewise does not want to know. “So,” she says. “If you’ll just – I don’t know. Take the long way home, and make sure that those messages get wherever they need to go?”

“I’ll do my best.” Henry pockets the portraits and glances around, like any other parent worried about overstaying their welcome at an adult child’s house. “Should I be on my…?”

It seems ridiculous to tell him to leave, there are still questions that Lucy needs to ask him, and she could use some advice on how to solve their present conundrums. So Henry ends up staying, is introduced to Agnes, and the old witch cottons on at once that he is another timewalker. “Lucy’s da, is it?” she asks, nodding sagely. “It’s your grandmother many times removed we’ve been speakin’ with. Amelie Wallis, the lass’s name is. Seems the gift runs strong in your family. That and the consortin’ with vampires.”

“What?” Henry looks as if he just got his head around _one_ vampire, and is hoping that more will not be forthcoming. “What are you talking about?”

At that, it is left to Lucy to explain what she’s learned about their heritage, and that Henry de Prestyn’s murder is the reason, at least in part, why Ashmole 782 exists. By the expression on Henry Wallace’s face, she can tell that he was unaware of this tidbit of trivia regarding his distant ancestor and familial namesake, and not sure what to do with it. “His murder?” he repeats at last. “Last year, All Souls 1589? But then – did you ever find out who did it?”

Flynn and Lucy exchange an evasive look. The answer is obviously yes, but telling Henry that a de Clermont killed a de Prestyn, even after both of them had been lied to, is not really the ticket for ensuring harmonious interfamilial relations. Besides, Gabriel is another subject best dealt with in small doses. “We did,” Lucy says, “but that’s not the main thing. It was more because he was a Bright Born, a witch-vampire hybrid, so he had rare powers that were preserved in his – ”

“Wait, a hybrid?” Poor Henry Wallace is learning all sorts of information about the supernatural world that they do not teach you at school. “That isn’t – creatures can’t – vampires and witches?”

“Yes, they can,” Flynn says, in a we-learned-that-long-ago, where-have-you-been sort of voice. “It’s rare and it has not happened very often, but it’s genetically possible in some circumstances. The blinkered insistence on endogamy and segregation has been partly responsible for weakening our collective abilities in the first place, not to mention promoting mistrust and factionalism among each separate creature species. That’s what your precious Covenant is directly designed to encourage, by the way.”

Henry doesn’t respond, but he glances at Flynn with a mildly horrified expression, as if realizing that a vampire could in fact one day be the father of his grandchildren. He gamely rallies from this nasty shock, however, and does his best to return to the matter at hand. “You said that someone had the rest of the manuscript, who shouldn’t. Who was that?”

“He – ” It strikes Lucy that this is where her dad’s specialty in the eighteenth century might actually be useful. “His name is David Rittenhouse.”

 _“Rittenhouse?”_ Henry looks startled, then alarmed, then utterly exasperated. “Oh, Jesus. Not that son of a bitch again.”

“What?” Lucy wasn’t entirely sure what reaction she was expecting, though this look of utter doneness wasn’t it. “You know about him? Not as the historical person, but as the – whatever he is? The monster?”

“Yeah, I know.” Henry blows out a breath. “Rittenhouse was – how do I put this? You know that saying about how you can hide most things from most people most of the time, but you can’t hide all things from all people all the time? I take it you know that he had a big role in founding the Congregation and advocating for creature apartheid, and that he fell into disgrace, ran amok, got too powerful, and had to be forcibly taken down. After that – ”

“By my father,” Flynn interrupts cuttingly. “One of _those_ de Clermonts took him in single combat, defeated him, and imprisoned him, to stop his reign of terror. You’re welcome.”

Henry opens his mouth, then nods once and continues. “Anyway, the Congregation and the creature world covered up Rittenhouse’s memory and erased him from the official records, but it was still there. When your mom and I were young, there was a group of ambitious witches who dug some of the old stuff out of the archives, learned about Rittenhouse, and decided that he was a misunderstood genius who had been unfairly railroaded by ingrate subordinates. That he was the only one with the right idea for how powerful creatures should be, rather than debasing themselves and trying to pass as watered-down humans. They were pretty popular, they had an inner circle and a lot of them were politically minded. This was the seventies, you know. Everyone had some kind of radical idea about rebelling against the government and overthrowing established authority, but this was different. Anyway, the ringleader of this band of Rittenhouse fans was a guy named Benjamin Cahill. He was always a huge pain in the – what?”

“That seems right.” Lucy remembers Denise and Michelle telling her, the first time Cahill slimed across her path, that he had known Carol when they were young and was smitten with her. It surprises Lucy exactly not at all to hear that he thought Rittenhouse was on the right track with the whole thing. It also gives her a chill, as she’s long suspected, but never been able to conclusively prove, that Cahill was responsible for murdering her parents. “That is, we – we know him too. Sorry. Go on, Dad.”

Henry lets out a sigh, clearly in frustration that Cahill is still around thirty years from now and an even bigger pain than ever, but does so. “Your mom was pretty deep in it, for a while. She and Cahill were – well, they had some kind of thing. Eventually, the two of us met, we hit it off, and I managed to talk some sense into her. Cahill and his gang of cronies always had a creepy, cultish vibe to me, I didn’t like it, and it took some time, but your mom came around. She cut off ties with Cahill and the rest of them, she told them she didn’t want any more of their project, and she left. But it was too late.”

“So Mom was one of these Rittenhouse fans?” Lucy doesn’t like the idea, but given the glimpses she’s seen of her mother’s character, it does make a certain sort of uncomfortable sense. “And she just – ?”

“Was,” Henry emphasizes. “She _was._ Like I said, she renounced it, honey, all right? She left. I’m pretty sure good ol’ Ben never forgave her for it, either. But your mother had originally started looking for Ashmole 782 precisely on the hope that she could use it to find where Rittenhouse had been imprisoned, free him, and return him to his rightful place as supreme ruler of the creature world. Cahill and the others sponsored her research, paid generously to get her a place at Oxford, but all Carol could ultimately find was those few pages. After we got married, after we had you, we realized that maybe it wasn’t _Carol_ who could get her hands on the book. Maybe it was you. And, well.” He shrugs, a little helplessly. “We weren’t sure what to do with that. But we were – we _are_ – frightened. It’s not an excuse, but we are. So when we took you to Venice last fall and Cahill was conveniently the one there to test you and tell lies about your magic, we couldn’t help but fear that he knew it too. If he _was_ going to try to use you as his personal key to Ashmole 782, to find Rittenhouse and realize all his grand world-domination plans, we… we couldn’t let that happen. We _can’t._ And I know spellbinding you and not telling you why was a terrible thing to do to you, but in our minds, the alternative – for you, for us, for the entire world – was so much worse.”

It’s Lucy’s turn to start to say something, then stop. She turns away, pacing across the solar, arms tightly folded. She could say something about how they could have tried to tell her anyway, though she doesn’t know if her six-year-old self would want to be burdened with that knowledge. She knows that they weren’t – that they _aren’t –_ planning to die next year, when Cahill probably sees his chance and outright assassinates them, hoping to get his hands on Lucy. Denise and Michelle also said that he was very keen on adopting her after Henry and Carol died, but they insisted on taking her in, as Carol wanted. And in a twisted way, Cahill has gotten what he wanted. Ashmole 782 has been found, Rittenhouse has been freed, and he even has some of it. Cahill himself holds the senior witch seat on the Congregation, perfectly positioned to activate his decades-old network of sympathizers and supporters, the instant their dark overlord steps out of the shadows and reveals his ultimate return. Carol might have left, but Lucy very much doubts that all of them did. Lying in wait, biding their time, watching and waiting for her to come to Oxford and do – what? Exactly this?

She comes to a halt at the window, staring over the courtyard of the Old Lodge. She feels used, sullied, dangerous as a nuclear warhead, something that possibly should not be allowed around unsuspecting people. If Cahill killed her parents to get to her, if Rittenhouse is free because of her, because of this plot revolving around this fabulously powerful magical manuscript that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place, does she have to docilely play her part in the remorseless workings of fate? They’ve been thinking that they need to get the second part of Ashmole 782 back, then hide it, but why can’t they just burn the cursed fucking thing? If it’s going to cause so much chaos and misery and power-grubbing, if it’s indirectly the reason Lucy grows up as an orphan and whatever else – _why?_

“Hey,” Flynn’s voice says, low in her ear, as his hand touches the small of her back. “Hey, _moja ljubav,_ are you all right?”

“I – yes. Fine.” Lucy forces a rather plastic smile and turns around to face her father (God, her father, he’s standing across from her and looking concerned, he’s taking a restorative sip of wine, he’s _here._ ). “Dad, that’s helpful and really does explain a lot, but in that case… shouldn’t we just destroy it? It’s going to ruin so many lives, cause so much pain, so many evil people are going to do everything they can to get hold of it… why do we have to just let that happen? I don’t want – I don’t want to lose this, I don’t want to lose what I have, I _don’t._ But if the alternative is giving Rittenhouse and Cahill and Temple and all these other horrible men another chance to get it and completely destroy everything – ”

She is almost on the brink of tears, as if she has to either alter everything she has ever known about herself and her own life – after all, she has been intrinsically, symbiotically connected to Ashmole 782 before she was even born, and she doesn’t know what effect destroying it would have on her – or stand back and watch the power-mad assholes win. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t _know._ No matter what Asher said about her being the most extraordinary witch he has ever known, she feels like Sisyphus with the boulder, constantly getting just in sight of potential salvation and then having it crash back down. Flynn silently takes her in his arms, and Lucy sniffs hard, tempted to just bury her face in his chest and lose it for a little, to not be quite so strong, but she can’t. She turns her mouth up, he kisses her, and then she heaves a deep breath and pulls back, turning to Henry. “Well? What do you think?”

“I – ah.” Henry casts a furtive glance between her and Flynn, as if realizing that they really do love each other and that he himself might be guilty of the same sort of reflexive prejudice in assuming the worst of a vampire, and clears his throat. “It would certainly change things, both with the creature world and our family. Maybe I’m selfish in not wanting that to happen, because the known evil is always better than the unknown, but I can’t stop whatever decision you make. I will say, however, that if there’s anything that can properly defeat Rittenhouse, that can fully destroy him and not just hold him in stasis, always a threat to be found by some other ambitious evil jackass and freed again, it’s that book. I can understand why you don’t know if it’s worth keeping around, that it’s caused a lot of pain and hardship. I believe it. It has for us too, and I can see it’s going to be a hell of a lot more. But without it, we have no chance, and… well. For me, that’s worth something. So… do what you will.”

Lucy considers him, this kind, gentle, tired man, a historian who never complained about his wife getting more prestigious faculty positions and fellowship money than he did, who did his work and loved his daughter and tried his best as a parent, even when he screwed up, knowing what he had pulled Carol away from and which might still rear its ugly head to consume Lucy too. Rittenhouse and Cahill and Ashmole 782, this cycle that seems never-ending, and which, one way or another, has to be brought to culmination. She has been so caught up in the emotion that she still has not let herself accept the reality and the release of seeing him again, of hearing him say this. Just as it meant so much to Flynn to hear it from Asher, it moves her in an impossible, heart-rending way to hear it from Henry. She crosses the room, and – for once, letting down the walls that she has built up, the mistrust, the need to look for the catch and think of something that could be dangerous – she hugs her dad.

Henry harrumphs, seems surprised and a bit heartbroken – perhaps he thinks they’re estranged in the future, even if he doesn’t realize that he’s dead, and knows not to take this for granted. They remain in each other’s arms for a few moments, and then he pulls away, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and looking down into her face. “If you’re trying to get part of Ashmole 782 back from Rittenhouse,” he says, “if you want, I can help.”

“That is…” Considering what he knows about Rittenhouse, and the instinctive need to fill the paternal role after the removal of Asher, Lucy is strongly tempted to accept. But they have learned the hard way that there’s a very high cost to involving the past versions of their families in their adventures, and she thinks of her seven-year-old self in her Little Mermaid pajamas, fast asleep back in the year 1990. If Henry _is_ going to die in 1991, if that’s still coming, Lucy wants that girl to have as much time with her father as she can. She can’t be responsible for taking him away even earlier, and she has already given him the portraits, the messages that he has to get to safety somewhere in time, if there is going to be any lifeline for them on the far side. “Dad, I wish we could accept, but it’s better for you to get out of here. Get home. Go back to Mom and… and to me. Do what you can. Take the pictures to whoever might need them. I love you, and it means more to me than I can possibly say that I got to see you again. But you have to let us do this on our own.”

Henry considers that, then nods, chin held stoutly as if not to let it tremble. It’s clearly his instinct as a father to be there for his little girl, but even if her child self is unavoidably foremost in his mind, he can see that this Lucy, this woman, isn’t her, and he can’t insist on coddling her. He blows out a painful breath, pulls her in for another hug and a kiss on the forehead, and then turns to Flynn. “You’re – well. You know what I’d be tempted to say as a dad, but you… you’re all right. I know Lucy can look after herself, but do your part.”

“Yes, sir.” Flynn manages to make it only slightly sarcastic, and he holds out his hand, which Henry duly shakes. “She tends to look after me, but I’ll do my best.”

Henry nods again, and then they walk him down the stairs and out to the gate of the Old Lodge. He doesn’t know that this is a final parting, he doesn’t see the need to make too much of a production on the goodbye, and Lucy has to hold back her instinct to clutch at him, to tell him to stay. But he can’t do that for the same reason they couldn’t bring Christian or Asher from here to the present, not when there are other lives, other threads, that need them to go on. She’s just trading him back to her other self, for whatever time they have, and she knows it’s not enough. “Dad,” she says, as Henry’s preparing to go. “Be careful.”

“You too, pumpkin.” He smiles at her, and his eyes crinkle, and he touches her cheek one more time. “I’ll be seeing you.”

With that, he strides off into the streets, and Lucy watches him as long as she can, until she loses sight of him in the crowd. Her throat feels too thick to say anything, and Flynn slips his arms around her waist from behind, resting his chin on her head. He, obviously, knows exactly what she’s feeling. Then he says again, “Are you all right?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy turns around to kiss him. “Just take me to bed.”

Flynn sweeps her off her feet as requested, hooking one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders, as he carries her bridal-style upstairs to their bedroom, kicks the door open and shut with his foot, and sets her down on the covers. He commences undressing her without a word, unlacing her bodice and skirts and tossing it in deep crumples on the floor. Then he climbs up on the mattress, pushes her bare legs apart, and slides down between them, finding her clit with his tongue and her folds with his fingers. He works thoroughly, spurred on by her hungry little whines and whimpers, sucking and stroking and licking and kissing with exquisite artistry until she is soaking wet, trembling, and on the brink of release, but not quite. Then he pulls back, undoes his own breeches and kicks them off, and eases into her as she reaches up to wrap her arms around his neck, guiding him in, guiding him home.

Flynn fucks her slowly and softly, moving in measured thrusts, gentle touches – not because he’s afraid of hurting her and holding himself back, but because he can sense that she needs it this way, to feel his adoration and the promise made between them, binding as any proper wedding vow taken in a church, that he is never going to leave her again. As much as it is in his power, he is – as Asher said – hers, utterly and permanently. Lucy wasn’t afraid of marrying him before, not exactly, but she didn’t feel that it was the right time. It still isn’t, since they don’t have the time to organize a wedding and the shadow of their lost families means that any celebration would be bittersweet, but they don’t need one. They will have one later, if they want it, but in all ways that matter, they _are_ married. This, in its simplicity and sweetness and silence, is their ceremony, and also, in its way, their wedding night.

Lucy kisses his chin and his ear and his cheek, and Flynn grips the pillow on each side of her head, uttering a deep growl in his throat as he hitches himself up on her, thrusts again, and loses himself in her. Lucy can feel the glow burning in her, wrapping her in an orgasm as warm and comfortable and nourishing as hot cocoa on a winter’s night, faint flickers of white curling around her fingers where she smooths them over the straining line of his back, the knobs of his spine and the hard muscle. She sighs, and nuzzles close to him when he rolls off and gathers her into his chest, and for the first time in weeks, she properly sleeps.

That, however, is the end of whatever limited leisure time they can feel themselves to have. The next morning, Lucy has to complete what she was originally trying to do, and make the trek out to Kit’s lodgings in Southwark. It takes a while, and he’s not exactly pleased to see her, especially when she explains that Gabriel has stayed in France and won’t be returning. Kit seems to feel, not without reason, that the least he can expect out of this is to get repeatedly laid by a beautiful idiot, and he raises an eyebrow at Lucy. “What has he done to displease you, my lady, to be so banished? It must be something. Something else, that is.”

“Never mind.” If they get into the subject of Gabriel’s failings, they will be here come next September as well, and Lucy looks at Kit, his profile artfully lit by sun and shadow as he leans haughtily against the wall. “I just – I wanted to apologize to you. I’ve suspected the worst of you for a long time, and I wasn’t sure what to make of you, and I – I know what you did for Garcia, and why you didn’t tell anyone about it. I don’t know if it makes a difference to you at all what I think about it, but I’m not going to tell anyone, and I – understand.”

Kit glances up at her sharply, startled out of his aesthetically insouciant lounging. There’s a piquant pause. Then he says, “You do, do you?”

“About what really happened with Henry de Prestyn?” Lucy mirrors his pose as best she can, taking care to look as casual and unthreatening as possible. “Yes, I do. And I don’t have any right to ask you anything else, but if you wanted to, we could use your help.”

Kit regards her with an amused expression. She can’t tell if it pleases him to see her asking for his help, if he still suspects her of insincerity, or if he wants to lord it on the moral high ground over her, but his daemon’s curiosity gets the better of him. “What’s it?”

“You remember when you and Gabriel tracked down David Rittenhouse, I’m sure?” At his fractional nod, Lucy goes on, “Well, now Rittenhouse has half of Ashmole 782, and we need to get it back from him. We’ll need the help of as many creatures as possible, and you would be a great asset to us, and – and to Garcia.” The last part feels slightly manipulative, asking Kit to do something else in the name of a love that is not just unrequited but barely recognized, but Marlowe rarely makes decisions in the name of sound logical sense. If you reach him, you do so in emotion, or in passion, or anger. He and Gabriel handled an entire creature mob together, and Lucy knows that he can keep a secret like a steel trap. They do need him. It doesn’t matter how.

“Should I bring along Fawkes?” Kit asks, deliberately offhand. “My compatriot, the Yorkshireman? You seemed to mislike him when you met before, but it seems the sort of business at which he would fain have a talent.”

“Actually, yes.” The time to worry about the residual taint of treason from associating with Guy Fawkes is long past, and Lucy would pay to see him light a barrel of gunpowder under Rittenhouse’s ass. Even though it wouldn’t kill him, the mental image would be enough. “If you both come along to the Old Lodge tonight, we’ll speak more of it then.”

Kit considers, then smiles. It’s guarded and sardonic, as all of his smiles are to some degree, but there is a crooked, reluctant fondness buried somewhere just the same. “I say at least, Lady Clairmont, you keep a man’s life entertaining. Very well. I shall see about it.”

Lucy nods, thanks him, and takes her leave. That’s part one down, though the next step of the recruitment process will be harder. She hasn’t seen Lady Beaton since Elizabeth’s announcement that she knew about their association, and though it’s unlikely that they could get arrested for treason in five weeks, it’s not impossible. As well, the older witch may feel betrayed or taken advantage of, that Lucy used her to learn about magic and then quit town without another word, and while Lucy would understand that feeling, she doesn’t have too much time to pour oil on the water and rebuild bridges, especially if repeated visits would catch the eye of the royal spies. Can she ask Kit to plant misinformation on that front, or vouch for her if the topic does arise in some clandestine small-council meeting? It doesn’t feel like they have that kind of relationship, but she needs to be shrewd.

Ultimately, however, there is nothing to do but ask. Lucy makes her way to Cornhill, knocks on the door, and waits for half an hour until at last, Lady Beaton deigns to receive her. “What’s it been, Lady Clairmont?” she asks cynically, the instant they are alone in the sitting room. “Nigh on four months and nay e’en a letter? Too triflin’ and Scottish for your ladyship’s attention, now that the great harlot has had her two bits to say?”

“I – ” While this at least proves that Lady Beaton also knows about what happened with Elizabeth, Lucy stalls on how exactly to answer the charge. Finally she says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to put you in danger. There’s been – a lot happening, and I’ve been out of the country. But I’ve mastered my familiar, and she even has a name now, Corra. I couldn’t have done that without you, and I need your help with something. It’s important.”

Lady Beaton eyes her beadily, intrigued but still miffed, and it takes a further catalogue of extensive explanations to bring her grudgingly around. At last, however, she also agrees to make her way to the Old Lodge tonight for Rittenhouse-luring activities, and Lucy returns home thinking that she has not done too terribly, perhaps, at recovering old alliances. When she arrives, she discovers that Flynn has spent the morning at the School of Night, and has brought Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, and a few of the others to advise on the process. Raleigh stands politely at Lucy’s entrance, bowing to kiss her hand. “My lady, it is fortunate to see you again. How did your visit to Prague? I am told you retrieved at least some part of Dr. Dee’s magnum opus?”

“Yes, we got – we got some of it.” Lucy wonders if there are any rumors afoot yet about Edward Kelley’s unexplained disappearance and mysterious death, which now happened seven years earlier than it did in the original timeline. Is Rudolf going to be inclined to a grievance over the sudden loss of his favorite alchemist, and pursue investigations into the de Clermont family even after Lucy and Flynn have left? There’s nothing she can do about it if so, though the imperial court would have a hard time definitively connecting Kelley’s death to them. “The visit to Prague was… eventful. I am glad of our safe return.”

Raleigh nods and agrees that surely, surely, and Lucy is grateful that he doesn’t ask about their plans (or rather, lack thereof) to return Ashmole 782 to Dee, its purportedly rightful owner. Their overall strategy is, at its heart, rather simple. They are going to build a great pentacle in the solar, similar to the sort that Lucy and Agnes drew to summon Amelie Wallis, but much more powerful. They will place their own pages of Ashmole 782 in the center, and use it as a sort of magical beacon to attract Rittenhouse’s attention. Once he arrives in hopes of snatching them, the combined vampires, witches, and daemons will launch a full-house assault, by whatever method presents itself. They won’t be able to decisively overpower him, but the hope is that they can delay and damage him enough to wrench back the rest of the manuscript and drive him off. Once Ashmole 782 is reunited, they need to stash it in a secret hiding spot, location TBA, and cast the strongest degree of protection spells to conceal it for the next several centuries. Lucy has worried about whether they will hide it in the right place for it to become part of Elias Ashmole’s collection and be duly transferred to the Bod in 1692, but she’s also thought that by default, wherever they hide it is the right location. If it works, it will mean Ashmole 782 is still somewhere in the present when they get back, waiting for them to retrieve it properly and end this once and for all – well, they can hope, at least. That’s the point of all of this.

Kit, Guy Fawkes, and Lady Beaton arrive at the end of the afternoon, all of them casting politely judgmental side-eyes at the other and Fawkes, in particular, keen to hear what actions of an incendiary nature are planned. Flynn informs him that they will leave that up to his professional judgment, and Fawkes, with the expression of Benny from the Lego Movie when informed he can build a spaceship, rushes out to locate suitable casks of gunpowder. Raleigh, Kit, Harriot, and the rest of the School of Night go up to the solar to start drawing the pentacle, and Lucy, Agnes, and Lady Beaton huddle up for a strategy meeting. As the resident witches, they will be responsible for most of the heavy-duty magical attacks on Rittenhouse when he arrives, and when they’ve run through the spells several times, Agnes frowns. “’Twould be better if we had at least one more. Ye sent your da away already, Lucy? That’s a pity. He seemed a canny gent.”

“I did,” Lucy says, noticing Lady Beaton’s interested look at this mention of unexpected family. She also wonders if there’s going to be anything of the Old Lodge left standing, between Fawkes’ gunpowder and their magic, but it’s too late to alter the plan now. They can’t do magic out in the open, when any of their neighbors could see them and turn them in, and that would also give Rittenhouse a multitude of unsuspecting innocent hostages to snatch. She turns to Lady Beaton. “Do you have any of your sisters in London, anyone else who might be able to help us? I know it’s a lot, but…”

“It’s nay somethin’ you ask a woman to leave her family’s fireside and suddenly do for the evenin’,” Lady Beaton points out. “And there is one more choice besides, is there no? We ourselves spoke to Mistress Wallis once, and the pair o’ you twice, from what Agnes says. There’s power in a third time, a charm. And she was the one whose father was made into the book itself, who became its own guardian and protector. She will have magic we dinna ken, and she could be the one who seizes it back from him.”

Lucy glances at her, startled. The thought of calling Amelie once more had occurred to her, but only in a glancing, incidental way not to be considered as a real option. They narrowly dodged disaster when they summoned her back in Prague, there’s still the chance that this interferes in the Wallis/Wallace/Preston family’s timeline in unexpected ways, and if Lucy sent her father away for not wanting him mixed up in this, Amelie is just as risky. But she is also the only witch who has power comparable to Lucy’s own, she demonstrably does know a lot about Ashmole 782, and she deserves some sort of chance to see this brought full circle, if she had to lose her own father for its making. Lucy says, “All right. Let’s try to call her.”

They make their way upstairs to the smaller sitting room, away from where the School is working, and start the preparations. Since they have been through this twice already, it goes faster, and while Lucy is somewhat afraid that Michael Temple is going to pop up instead like an evil jack-in-the-box, they avoid such inopportune materializations. At last, there is the slight disturbance in the air that she has come to associate with a door in space-time being pushed ajar, and for the third time, Amelie Wallis steps through.

The first time, in Essex, she was young, a girl. The second time, in Prague, she was older, pregnant, a grown woman. This time, she is fully silver-haired, face etched with lines, and she moves carefully, with the help of a cane. She looks to be at least Agnes’ age, as it strikes Lucy that they have now seen Amelie in each of the common avatars of the Goddess: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. It seems unfair to ask an old woman to help with this dangerous task, but as Amelie lifts her head and regards them, she doesn’t seem altogether surprised. “You,” she says. “Yes, I thought we would see each other again at least once more.”

“Hello.” Lucy regards her ancestress carefully, relieved to see that she has not been erased from existence, though that does not preclude other problems. “I apologize for the interruption. If you wanted to – ”

Amelie shakes her head, as if to say that she is here, she chose to come, so questions about whether she wanted to are beside the point. “I was with the Foulger sisters,” she says. “They will be the ones for you to speak to soon, I think. What is it now?”

“Foulger sisters?” Lucy thinks back to the other names listed in the Sept-Tours fragment: Bathsheba and Abiah Foulger, the witch sisters of Nantucket, who she thought were Amelie’s students and protégés to carry forward the secret of Ashmole 782 to the next generation. She wonders if they can call on Amelie again after she dies – the year Lucy seems to recall is 1688 – or if they only have access to her through the linear chronological span of her life, and this is the last opportunity. In other words, they can’t double back, they can’t get her at any age prior to the one she was at the last time they saw her, or risk entangling her timeline to a too-twisted degree. Lucy turns back to Amelie. “We have something to do tonight, and we thought that you should be here for it. If you wanted.”

Amelie listens while they explain, brusquely shrugs off Lucy’s suggestion that she might be too elderly for this sort of bare-knuckle engagement, and takes a firmer grip on her cane, as if to personally brain David Rittenhouse with it at the earliest opportunity. “I’ll be the judge of what’s too elderly,” she says briskly. “Show me along.”

With that, the four witches make their way to the solar, where the School of Night has almost finished their work. A massive black pentacle has been drawn on the floor, grease chalk glistening in the candlelight, and Kit is filling in a chain of complicated runes. Guy Fawkes is carrying several small barrels of powder into the room, setting them at points along the star, and Flynn eyes him as if to say that yes, he did give permission for this, but it’s still not a combination that he feels altogether comfortable seeing in his family’s home. At the entrance of the women, he looks up, then blinks. “This is – ?”

“This is Amelie Wallis.” Lucy glances at Fawkes, who knows the Prestyn family, and has met Amelie’s father Henry – his younger, still-living self – at their residence in Lancashire. But Fawkes has no reason to connect the presence of an old woman to a child who won’t be born until 1622, long after he’s dead, and pays no special attention. “She’s going to help us.”

Flynn goggles, since he obviously knows who she is and that there might be complications in this decision, but likewise has to concede that when it comes to Rittenhouse, they are going to need all hands on deck. If this goes wrong and they aren’t strong enough to take him, there’s a very real chance that he could abscond with their Ashmole pages, rather than them snatching his. Given what Henry Wallace told them about Cahill and his cronies trying to use the manuscript to restore Rittenhouse to his supposedly rightful place atop the creature world, that needs to be avoided at all costs. Lucy wonders if they can be sure that he’ll turn up – it’s a first, worrying about whether he _will_ appear rather than whether he _won’t_ – but decides that it’s too tempting an apple to resist. He’ll be here. They just better hope they’re ready.

Chitchat falls to a minimum as they make the final preparations. Raleigh, an experienced captain and commander, appoints himself as field general, and orders them into position: Fawkes with a fuse to light the barrels, Lucy, Lady Beaton, Amelie, and Agnes stationed at four points of the star, and Kit at the fifth. Flynn will place the Ashmole pages in the center, and despite Lucy’s protestations, has insisted on serving as the first line of defense. He feels that even if the pages somehow did not suffice to lure Rittenhouse in, the chance to taunt Flynn himself, to rub salt in the wound about the scene in St Vitus and the blow-up with Gabriel, would do the trick. Thomas Harriot and the other School men are prepared to serve as extra brute force, jumping on Rittenhouse and holding him down to rip the pages out of his coat if necessary, and it almost has the sense of a darkly comic vaudeville, a costume drama like one of Kit’s or Shakespeare’s, painted players on a wooden stage preparing for the arrival of a pantomime villain. But there is nothing funny about what is at stake. They are throwing open all their magical and mortal defenses, laying themselves bare for the most dangerous supernatural creature of all time to swoop down on them and have his pickings like a vulture on carrion, and if it goes wrong, they could very well all die.

The windows go dark as dusk falls, and Raleigh lights the candles. It is called the School of Night, after all, and it is very much that now, the assembled creatures and humans gathered in unholy confraternity, as if all they need is long cloaks and dark hoods to complete the image of secret, eldritch ritual. They’ve done all they can, brought together all the connections they had, even in lieu of losing the de Clermonts. Lucy wishes Rabbi Loew could have traveled from Prague with Josef the golem, as he was strong enough to punch Rittenhouse in the face during the fight at the cathedral, but they have to hope this is enough.

At the appointed moment, Flynn proceeds into the pentacle with the Ashmole pages and sets them down, as Lucy and the other three witches raise their hands and begin to cast the spell that will reveal them, cast their location into the sky like a strobe light, to draw Rittenhouse’s attention if he is anywhere nearby. As they work, she has a sense that the solar roof no longer exists, as if they themselves are no longer quite physically in the Old Lodge, and has to hope that this means something in regard to the possibility of whether or not it all gets blown up. The words scrape Lucy’s throat like glass, a spell almost as complex and delicate as the blood magic she did to fashion Josef, and she can feel the thrill of the forbidden, the seductive allure of the dark side. They have to do these sort of things, they can’t rely on only white magic if they’re going to trap an entity as strong as Rittenhouse, but it disturbs her how much she likes it. She needs to be careful, but later. _Later._

The spell is finished. The wind whistles, the stars tremble like fine fat crystals, the pentacle burns with an eerie pale light, throwing their faces into stark relief like marble angels. The magical chain burns between the witches’ hands, ready to be thrown, as Flynn crouches down in expectation of a leap, Fawkes clutches the fuse, and Raleigh draws his sword. They teeter on the very brink of action, on a hair-trigger, as silence reins supreme. Then all at once, Kit’s nostrils flare, and he lifts his head with a daemon’s precognition. “Someone’s coming.”

The entire team draws a breath, steeling themselves for anything, and Lucy tips forward on her toes, waiting, _waiting._ But she thinks she would feel it if it was Rittenhouse swooping from the sky, and this seems different. She can sense footsteps as if someone is climbing the stairs back in the Old Lodge, might try to open the door and enter the solar – or wherever they are now – and can’t think who it could possibly be. The servants have been strictly instructed not to disrupt them. Henry Wallace was sent on his way, and she doesn’t _think_ he would have decided to turn back at the last minute, come to help them anyway. If he did – well, it’s not as if she doesn’t want to see her dad again, but he’s dead, and the danger in him helping was already enough that she –

The rest of the gathering senses something off as well, and spins around. But it’s not a threat, it’s not Rittenhouse. Someone is in the house and someone has come upstairs in confusion and pushed the door open, completely unaware of what they are walking into the middle of. An indignant voice says, “What is this – this is our house! Knaves! Who is there?”

At that, Lucy freezes. It can’t – it _can’t_ be. She cast the memory spell, she _cast_ it. To say the least, this is what he can’t be allowed to see, what he can’t return to – did she make a mistake? Did he remember? Or did he forget, and decide to escape to London anyway, troubled by the ghost of a memory he could no longer recall, haunted by a phantom murder, the sight of blood on his hands without knowing how it came there? Of course he would not expect to find someone in the family’s house, if as far as he knows, they are all back in France. But now – not _now, not now, not him –_

It’s too late.

It’s Christian.


	22. Queen's Gambit

Maria de Clermont is on the very edge of serious worry by the time her son finally returns. She should not, she promised that she would trust him, and it is not that she _doesn’t,_ but she knows how dangerous Michel is, and this has whiffed of some sort of trap from the start. She paces in the upstairs parlor, away from the others so they will not notice that something is wrong, and has nearly worn a groove into the carpet when the door opens and Wyatt makes his entrance. He looks pale and harried, but not physically wounded, and Maria rushes to him, gripping his forearms. “What happened? Was he there? What did he want? Are you – ”

“I’m fine, _Maman._ ” Wyatt looks briefly touched at this uncharacteristic display of emotion. “I just… Temple didn’t try to attack me, he wanted to gloat. He had a journal, a book of some kind, and he said that it belonged to Lucy. I don’t know if she wrote it in the sixteenth century or wherever, and then he got hold of it in the present, but it would explain why he’s constantly been three steps ahead of us. But he has Sarah, he’s been spoiling her and teaching her how to think like him and I thought he was torturing her, but somehow this is even – ”

Wyatt stops, stammering, struggling to articulate the anger. Then he says, “And that’s not even the worst part. He was dropping major hints about Liechtenstein. Asking about Gabriel, where he was. I came up with some bullshit about him being busy and out of the country, but Temple clearly didn’t buy it. That’s a top-secret Knights of Lazarus fortress, he’s not supposed to have any way of knowing about it. Sure, that’s probably irrelevant where he’s concerned, but if he found it, if he’s going to try to get there and – what, kill Gabriel before Garcia and Lucy can get back and – ”

“What?” That goes through Maria like a blade, hard and sharp and cold. “Gabriel is – he was supposed to be safe there! Send more Knights, make sure it is not – ”

“I’m not sure.” Wyatt moves toward the window, gazing down on the misty canals, the way Venice looks beautiful and atmospheric and not quite real. “If we panic and immediately send a bunch of guys, it’s the easiest thing in the world for Temple to track them, especially if he’s trying to bluff us into making a reckless move and confirming it. It’s not like I want to leave Gabriel exposed either, but I have a dozen of the best Knights there, pretty much everyone I didn’t already summon here. They’re not exactly schlubs. Temple could try to fight his way through them, but he’s spent the last several hundred years skulking around and being smug corporate evil. That might be a bit much even for him.”

Maria opens her mouth, then shuts it. Much as she approves of this evidence of Wyatt thinking tactically, her fear still beats a deafening tattoo in her skull. Part of her wants to hang solid sense and shrewd strategy alike and run all the way to the Swiss Alps right now; she trusts a dozen Knights of Lazarus, more or less, but she trusts her own hands more. She grips the back of a chair and silently talks herself down. Then she says, “So Temple has your child, and has openly threatened mine. And what – you counsel that we do nothing?”

“Of course I don’t mean we should do nothing.” To judge from Wyatt’s face, he too is only with difficulty restraining himself from something intemperate. “But you know how this son of a bitch works. He plants hints, he suggests things, he manipulates and tricks you into doing half of it yourself, thinking you’re going to stop him. If he’s even slightly unsure about Gabriel being in Liechtenstein, and we make it obvious, we’ll regret it.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Maria hears a rushing in her ears, the ghost of a pounding heart, a phantom heat in her chest and cheeks, as she twists her fingers together and wonders if she might tear them off. She knows that she is close to the edge of a rage, and has to walk it back, cannot give into it as inordinately as she used to. Just as vampires can sometimes crave someone, an uncontrollable physiological reflex, they can also slip into a trance, a hunting blood fury, that does not subside until the target is dead or the threat has been destroyed. Maria knows it well, since it is the state in which she spent several decades after 1944. The way it wrings you out and fills you up again with a sick, sweet poison, the way the blood tastes so good, better than ambrosia. But she does not want to be that woman any more, that unrestrained terror. Even if her marks were often monsters or Nazis, many of them – she can admit that, has always had to reckon with her willingness to slaughter innocents – were not, and too much is at stake right now for her to lose her head. Even so, the compulsion is chemical, an addiction as draining and consuming as any drug. The high is brilliant, the crash more so. After a hit, you will often do anything for another.

 _“Maman?”_ Wyatt has been watching her, knows the signs. _“Maman._ Listen to me.”

“Yes, my dear. Yes, as I agreed, we cannot do anything – foolish.” Maria re-animates her stiff limbs and moves to sit down on the chaise longue. “Did he say anything about Cecilia?”

“Not much.” Wyatt’s jaw ticks, and he glances away. “He goaded us about not making more of an effort to rescue her. I don’t know what he’s doing to her, but what, we’re just going to let him collect more of us to torment? He made me an offer. Not that I believe he actually meant it or would let it happen, but he said that Cahill was willing to give Anton his Congregation seat back, and that he’d also return mine. Presumably if I came back and played ball, and placated all the vampires who are upset at how the family has been treated, he’d give me a cookie and a pat on the head. Said he could see his way to releasing Sarah to me if so. And I – I don’t know. Right now, we’re completely shut out, we’re outlaws, and Temple doesn’t have the right to _give_ us anything, but maybe it’s worth considering. At least we’d be able to keep more of an eye on the assholes that way.”

Maria utters an indeterminate sound in her throat. She has never been overly fond of the Congregation or its rules, even as she saw the use in having Wyatt on it, and she is even less fond of them now. “So they think that you and Anton will return to serve as opportune puppets for them? They truly must be unbelievably arrogant.”

“I don’t know what they think.” Wyatt sits down across from her. “Like Jack said, I think Temple’s finding it harder than he anticipated, to control the other vampires without us. If we put in some kind of token appearance, if we looked even briefly like we were collaborating, that could legitimize him. But we also can’t just refuse to play the game at all, or we’ll stay where we are. SOL. So if I try to work both sides on the offer, I don’t – ”

“If you went back to speak with him,” Maria says deliberately, “we could have a brief period of being assured that we knew where he was. You do understand him, my dear, and clearly have some sense of how his mind works, what he wants to hear. I presume you could keep him occupied for an hour or two, perhaps more at necessity. Could you not?”

“Maybe, but – ” Wyatt frowns. _“Maman,_ what are you thinking?”

Maria does not answer. The glimmers of a dangerous plan have begun to occur to her, and while it is a mad wager, that is no different from any they have made thus far. It would be close kin to what she did in her Nazi-hunting days, and she would welcome the chance to come to proper grips with this foe. “Temple lives in Venice,” she says. “Or at least he keeps a house here. That must be where he is holding Sarah and Cecilia, don’t you think?”

“Probably, but – ” Wyatt looks confused for a moment more, until alarmed understanding begins to crystallize on his face. “Are you suggesting that I – what, serve as the distraction for a few hours, while you raid his place and rescue them?”

“It has the value of novelty, does it not?” Maria lets out a thin, knife-edged laugh. “You want your daughter safe, we all need Cecilia, and if Temple thinks we have made no effort to retrieve her, that he has us backed into a corner while you dither over his offer, he may have lowered his guard. There is some space to work with that.”

“Yes, but – ” Wyatt clearly wants to come up with some objection to this plan, but can’t think exactly what. “You’d go by yourself?”

“Do you forget who I am?” Maria turns to look at her shadowed reflection in the ornately framed mirrors, the thousand faceless women that flit among the opulence of the drawing room. “I have laid waste to entire Panzer battalions, left brigades of SS men drowned in their own blood. Whatever fools Temple has left behind would not concern me greatly.”

“I’m sure, but – ” Wyatt grimaces slightly at the reminder. “If you left a stack of dead bodies at his place, we’d _definitely_ have to flee the city. That, or we’d start an outright – ”

“Why must we avoid the war, exactly?” Maria gets to her feet, can feel the rage coming on, the black-burning tide that sweeps over her head and gently, gently pulls her down. “Your instinct is still to mediate, to work within the system, to return to the Congregation and hope that you can effect enough lukewarm restraint to halt Temple and Cahill and Keynes from the worst of their depredations. It is admirable, and your – your father would have wanted the same, to diplomatize and negotiate, to resort to force only when all other options had been extinguished. He would see it rash to race into a conflict when it could have been solved more sensibly. But I am not your father. He was always my conscience, you know that. Temple feared him. He should more profitably fear me.”

 _“Maman –_ ” Wyatt gets up, moving closer to her as if to tame a wild beast, a lioness loosed from her cage and about to spring at the throats of all and everyone. “I can’t entirely say you’re wrong. But do you want to do this because it’s actually the best course of action, or because you just want to kill more people, and aren’t fussy about how? Even if you did, it still won’t bring Papa back. You finally accepted that, eventually. But with the letters, the ones Jack brought, I’m not sure you remember that anymore. You feel like he’s there again, and if you could just burn enough kingdoms to the ground, you could reach him.”

Maria turns a cold stare on him, but Wyatt does not back down. “I know you don’t want to hear that. And it’s not like I don’t want to punish Temple. This evil asshole is brainwashing my kid, he’s done terrible things to all of us, he’ll do as many more as he can. I want him to suffer for it. But I don’t want to lose you again too.”

Maria’s eyes flash to him, and Wyatt himself seems taken aback that he said it aloud, but not so much as to retract it. They are still so amateur about discussing their complicated relationship as mother and son, his feelings of inadequacy and his inbuilt belief that she will take him less seriously than his brothers, that he clearly feels that she will dismiss this or see it as no legitimate obstacle to her plans. Maria’s first instinct is to tell him that he will not, that they cannot afford tender moral scruple in the trenches of a bitter war, that she too would rather be with her family, but there is a part of her that would not at all object to being with her beloved. She does not mean to die. She is not so meek a martyr as that. But if it is teeth and claws, the law of beasts, eye for an eye, that is the only thing Michel can be made to fear, he could do with a taste of it. He has sat on high in smugness and self-satisfaction and tyranny for too long, and he must be brought down.

“Let’s talk about it with the others,” Wyatt says. “If Anton does want his seat back – and I’m sure Jiya would like to – ”

“Do we need to hear what they would say?” Maria loves her granddaughter very much, and she has even come to respect the Russian witch, but she cannot imagine that they would contribute anything constructive in this instance. “We kept this arrangement from them before. I am sure the human would have something amusing to say, but we can dispense with his witticisms in this instance.”

“Rufus is – ” Wyatt starts, decides that she’s trying to change the subject, and stops. “Never mind. If you really think that you can get into Temple’s place and grab Sarah and Cecilia – it’s worth a shot. But you can’t kill anyone just because they’re there. Only if you have to. You said Papa was your conscience – well, I know he was. But I’m the grandmaster now, and since that would mean something if it was Gabriel or Garcia, I’m telling you that you can’t.”

There is a slightly crackling silence. To say the least, Wyatt has struggled to assert his authority in his new role and the family in general, and Maria cannot recall him ever issuing a similar ultimatum. She knows that everything she has said about treating him equally to his brothers will fall flat if she arrantly disregards his commandments now, but part of her still bristles at the idea that she is expected to take orders from her youngest son. They stare at each other tensely, an unspoken clash of wills, until Maria inclines her head. “If you can arrange to meet Temple in a few days, then yes. I intend to do this.”

Of course, it is not so simple. They might have intended to keep it secret, but that plan does not survive first contact with the rest of the family. Jiya, at least, knows her grandmother well enough to see that something is afoot, and after a few token deflections, Maria is forced to tell her that they are coming up with a possible way to rescue Cecilia, though it will be risky. To her surprise and gratification, Jiya doesn’t object. She considers it with a hard, set look on her face, then announces, “Good. How can I help?”

“You do not intend to waylay me?” Maria begins to wonder if she has underestimated Jiya’s capacity for violence, if it lies buried deep in all the de Clermonts, and can spring forth like a dark, tangling vine if necessity beckons. Her granddaughter has always been clever, kind, accomplished, geeky and gentle, a world away from the wars of the family’s earlier years. There is something to be said for the fact that she has not needed to experience them, but another one is coming now – perhaps the greatest any of them have known. “Or say that we should wait and see what transpires?”

Jiya gazes at her with an expression that reminds Maria irresistibly of Garcia – and therefore, herself. It is almost uncanny to glimpse yourself through that glass darkly, your reflection remaining where it is when you step away. “We’ve waited more than long enough,” Jiya says flatly. “Cecilia needs us. I’d come with you, but I’d just slow you down. Uncle Wyatt goes to talk to Temple, was that the second part? Maybe Rufus and I could make another diversion, something to ensure that the rest of them stayed busy. Or we could make some sort of contact with the Knights of Lazarus in Liechtenstein, ensure that Uncle Gabriel is still safe. We have to make use of this on as many fronts as we can.”

“We – we do, yes.” Maria looks at Jiya again, realizing that as with Wyatt, she loves her but has never opened up to her, shared much with her, trusted her as fully as she trusted everyone she has now lost. There is so much that has gone in the wastelands of her grief, and which she may never fully get back. “Can your Rufus do that? With the technology?”

“Rufus can do anything with technology.” A small, soft smile curls Jiya’s mouth. Maria’s aversion to the subject is well known, so it cannot hurt to have an expert to make sense of all the wires. (Or apparently _no_ wires. She does not understand.) “If Uncle Wyatt gives him an approximate location for the castle in Liechtenstein, he can do the rest. I’m guessing the Knights don’t carry cell phones, and even if so, the service on top of the Alps isn’t great.”

Maria, who has no idea, makes a noncommittal noise and sends Wyatt to confer with Rufus on the subject. She then chases down Jack and demands everything he might know about Temple’s house, possessions, property, or anything else that might impact on the rescue mission. Jack tells her that Temple’s residence is on the north-central side of Venice, adjacent to the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose, facing out into the lagoon and the cemetery island of San Michele. This seems a slightly macabre choice to Maria, if perversely fitting for that man; perhaps he goes there to gaze on the bones and exult in all the generations he has outlived, or drain the corpses of their dust? It is on precisely the opposite coast of Venice from the Palazzo Ducale and the de Clermonts’ townhouse, almost on a straight line. If Wyatt arranges a repeat meeting with Temple at the same café in the Piazza San Marco, so as not to pique his suspicion with a sudden change of locale, it would take a human twenty minutes to walk between the two places. A vampire running at top speed could be there in less than five.

That means that if this goes wrong and Temple smells something fishy, Maria will have a very limited amount of time to retrieve both Sarah and Cecilia and make a clean getaway. Nor is it clear which one, if she must, she should prioritize. It is her instinct to snatch Cecilia first no matter the cost, but if she returns without his daughter, Wyatt will be less than impressed. She entertains the idea of taking Jiya along after all, both for the extra pair of hands and because Sarah, doubtless fed on a steady diet of bone-chilling stories about the terrible de Clermonts, may be more inclined to trust Jiya. But nor can they hang an operation on the personal whims of a six-year-old girl. Maria will find her and Maria will remove her, regardless of Sarah’s opinion on the matter. She can be enlightened as to the error of Temple’s ways once everyone is safe.

For his part, Anton Sokolov volunteers to cast a few dissimulation and disguise spells on Maria, to lessen the likelihood of anyone noticing or catching her, and Maria wonders at the fact of her actually accepting a witch’s help. There is still that instinctive recoil of mistrust, but it’s gotten easier to overcome. Once Wyatt leaves that evening to send a particular message, and returns with the news that he and Temple have arranged a meeting for tomorrow, same place, same time, it is officially a go.

Maria has to time her departure very carefully. She cannot count on Temple leaving his house long beforehand, and Wyatt thinks he’ll only be able to stall him for an hour at most. Maria feels that if she can find Cecilia and Sarah swiftly, she should not need more than half an hour. Once Temple returns and finds his prisoners missing, he will of course realize that he has been tricked and institute retaliation, and they have to be braced for anything. Rufus is supposed to do whatever he does to see if the castle in Liechtenstein has been breached, and if there is any sign of interference, Maria intends to leave immediately. An entire extra detachment of Knights would certainly attract attention, but her alone, perhaps less.

Everyone knows their roles and has prepared for them, but the tension level is high and conversation minimal. They have only one shot to pull this off and hell to pay even or especially if it succeeds, and it’s getting on in spring. The plans that Temple, Cahill, and Keynes have been concocting over the winter are nearly ready to burst into fruition. If the de Clermonts do not strike back now, they may permanently lose their ability to do so, and Maria is keenly conscious of how it balances on the edge of a knife. There is too much to overcome all at once, so they must plan and prioritize. One thing at a time, one step toward survival. She has managed this far, in this hell. She can manage it yet.

She leaves early the next morning, slipping anonymously into the canals like any other well-dressed European woman, sitting in the gondola as it speeds up the Rio de Gesulti. When she steps off and pays, some local nuisance attempts to pinch her designer wallet, so Maria knocks him out, drags him behind some rubbish bins, and has a morning feed. She leaves him there in a pitiful heap (it will teach him to go around behaving that way) and checks the distance to the palazzo. She does not dare to come too close, as it cannot be discounted that Temple, clever bastard, has also whiffed something suspicious about this too-convenient capitulation. Much as it torments the patience she has never had, she waits.

At last, past eight o’clock, when she can be relatively certain that he has left, Maria breaks cover and starts to move. Doubtless Temple will not have left his lair so unguarded as all that, and though it looks quiet and deserted when she catches sight of it, she remains vigilantly on guard. His disgusting scent fills her nose, and the instinctive revulsion at entering another vampire’s territory uninvited wants to push her away, but Maria ignores both. She walks up the step and tests the door. If it is unlocked, that is a strong sign that this is a trap and she should bail out at once. She jiggles it. It is locked.

This is good, perhaps, but Maria de Clermont has rarely felt it wise to enter through her enemy’s front door. She glances at the ornate windowsills above, backs up a few paces, and hopes that Anton’s spells of concealment have served their purpose. Light and lithely as a circus acrobat, she leaps straight up, catches hold of the ledge, and balances on the window casement. It is locked from the inside, but she makes a fist and punches through the glass. One or two shards leave small scratches, which heal at once, and Maria wiggles her hand through, finds the latch, and pulls it open. She moves to the side so she can swing the window out, makes just enough space to slip through, and somersaults in like a cat burglar, landing on a rich carpet beyond. That was easy. Still possibly too much so.

Maria glances around the third-floor sitting room, wondering if there is any chance of finding a study, to steal back the journal Temple had, the one that might belong to Lucy. There might be other books and papers, something to give them an insight into Temple’s master plan, where he intends to strike next. But the captives are Maria’s prime objective, and the house is large enough that it will take even her a few moments to search it. She glances at the clock on the mantelpiece. It is five minutes until nine AM. The countdown begins.

Maria darts across the carpet, opens the door, and slips out into the hallway. The house is dim and quiet, and she strains her supernatural hearing for sounds of movement from any direction. The smell of Temple is everywhere, constantly making her head whip around in expectation of him emerging from behind a bookshelf, and the corridors have an unsettling sameness to them that makes her unsure if she has checked them already. That reminds her that it is not only vampire laws and defenses with which she must contend. After all, Temple is working with Rittenhouse, who is a powerful witch. He could have laid hostile enchantments on the house, magical defenses to entrap any uninvited guests or intruders, and Maria is aware of a faint buzzing in her ears, a distracting effect like a swarm of insects. When she next catches sight of a clock, it is ten minutes past nine. That did not feel like a quarter of an hour. She needs to move faster.

This seems difficult, when she is going as fast as she can, but she is aware of some sort of paradox: the harder she tries to find the way, the more difficult and elusive it becomes, doors and corridors spinning in merry rearrangement whenever she turns her back. She stands still, much as it goes against all her instincts, and draws a deep breath, focusing hard. Does not move, allows her senses to spread out into the dizzying dark warrens of the house, and closes her eyes. The buzzing is still there, but fainter. And then, in an instant –

There. Something, some familiar spark, some recognizable sign of life, up one flight of stairs and the third door on the left. Maria bounds for it, up the steps before they can shift on her again, and takes great care to never take her eyes off the doors. One, two, three. It is just ajar, and she can smell something – someone – behind it. Someone she knows.

Maria wants to race in, but she moves carefully, deliberately as a stalking panther, until she reaches the door, gets her fingers into the crack, and pushes it open. It is a small room, windowless, built with thick walls and a sealed, soundproof door so that any occupant inside, even screaming at the top of their lungs, could not be heard. Maria smells blood, and can sense the presence of silver, bright and beautiful and burning. There is somebody on the far side, huddled against the wall, manacled hand and foot. It is Cecilia of Normandy.

Rage such as she has not known since the height of her Nazi-hunting days sears through Maria like poison. In half a second, she is across the floor, kneeling in front of the chatelaine, lifting her chin to look into her face. Maria’s vampiric strength is useless against silver; she will not be able to break the cuffs open by force, and she scouts around for a pen, a stick, some instrument, anything that Temple might have been careless enough to leave in the room. She is visited by an awful flashback to the sight of Asher’s lifeless body hanging from its silver chains, and shakes her head frantically, tasting bile in her throat. “Cecilia,” she whispers urgently. “Ceci, Cecilia, are you there?”

It takes a long moment for Cecilia to respond. She lifts her head slowly, eyes blurred, her grey-golden hair hanging in tangled clumps around her face. “Madame?”

“Yes, _ma ch_ _ère_ , it is me.” Maria is assailed by an awful pang of guilt at this condition in which they have left her for weeks, the truth of the fact that they should have done more to rescue her the instant she was taken. “I have come to take you out of here. I am so sorry, I am so sorry. Can you stand?”

Cecilia doesn’t seem to understand the question. It’s not clear if she believes that Maria is really there, or is a hallucination brought on from torture and deprivation. She has the half-mad, black-eyed stare of a vampire who has not been fed in too long, and Maria glances around in search of a clock. Of course there is not one here, the prisoner not allowed the luxury of knowing how long their confinement endured, and to hell with it. “Come, my dear,” she says, sliding close enough to guide Cecilia’s mouth to her neck. “Quickly, now, quickly.”

For a moment more, Cecilia does not react. Then instinct takes over, and she snarls, fangs flashing out, as she plunges them into Maria’s throat hard enough to nearly tear out a chunk of flesh. The pain is considerable, but Maria resists the urge to jerk back. Cecilia mauls at her, far removed from the gracious, elegant, discreet woman who would be horrified if she knew what she had been reduced to, savaging at flesh and blood, lapping and licking with desperate, muffled noises. It goes on long enough that Maria begins to feel light-headed, dizzied; old vampires are slow to replace their blood, they cannot lose too much of it at one go, and she still has the second half of the rescue mission to complete. “Enough,” she says. “Enough, Ceci, more later. Do you hear?”

Still Cecilia does not stop, until Maria has to physically tear her off, and the chatelaine falls back, mouth slick with scarlet, the pupils of her eyes contracted to tiny, hungry points of pure blackness. Maria has rarely been afraid of any creature, but she is, just for a brief moment, afraid of Cecilia. This is Gerbert of Aurillac’s blood daughter, who has flatly disavowed all hint of her heritage or her sire’s evil ways, but now, in the depths of extremity, that dark making might break through. Maria gets to her feet, stumbling a little; her neck is a raw mess, and she cannot lick the wounds closed herself. She will need to return and have Jiya or Wyatt do it, but she must keep it together until then. She wonders if it is altogether a wise idea to set Cecilia free. Has Temple encouraged her to turn on her masters, done something to her so that she will attack them if she is returned? Or –

No time to ponder on that, and no choice. Maria has not come this far to leave Cecilia behind, and she steps out of the room, goes a few doors down, and retrieves some heavy implement to bash the chains free. She will have to undo the actual cuffs later, and the broken links clank ominously as she pulls Cecilia to her feet. She cannot move quickly or quietly with those, and she rattles like the ghost of Jacob Marley (Maria met Charles Dickens once, considered him a clever writer of stories but greatly unpleasant to his wife) as they hurry out. Rather, Maria does. Cecilia stops and stares around. “Madame?”

“Yes, it is me, it is me.” Maria glances anxiously down the dim corridor. She has heard a clock somewhere in the house, striking half past the hour. “Ceci, listen to me, you must remember who you are. Have you seen a girl around here, a little girl? Where is she?”

“The…. girl.” Cecilia strains as if to catch a fleeting memory. “The girl. Upstairs. Her bedroom. By the attic.”

Maria nods tersely. “Stay here,” she orders. “Wait. I will be back momentarily.”

With that – not sure if she should leave Cecilia alone in the hallway, but aware that she cannot get her up and back, and cannot have Sarah see her in such a state – Maria bounds for the attic stairs. She makes her way to the door at the end, takes a deep breath – does not know what she will see, or what she wants to – and pushes it open.

Inside, the room is as palatially equipped as could be imagined. There is much pink, frills and lace, princess decorations, white-painted furniture, a canopied bed and expensive toys, and while it is a more pleasant situation than Cecilia’s dark captivity, Maria feels a certain revulsion nonetheless. She stares around, then locks gazes with the room’s young occupant, who is sitting atop her quilts and playing with dolls. If Maria was in any doubt about the girl’s parentage, if it was indeed possible for a vampire to father a child on a witch, she is no longer. Sarah Proctor is Wyatt’s graven image, with his face and blue eyes and startled stare, and her neat blonde hair is Jessica’s. She is too startled to make a sound, but that does not last for much longer. She jumps to her feet, dropping the dolls, and utters a piercing shriek.

It rips through the house like a cannonball, Maria jerks back, and tries to think what to do. She has very little experience with small children. When she nursed her sons as newborn vampires, they were still adults, if confused, incoherent, blood-hungry, and helpless ones. She cannot bite through Sarah’s spinal cord to instantly kill her, which is Maria’s usual method of silencing uncooperative enemies, so she tries negotiation. “Do not scream,” Maria orders, staring dead into Sarah’s eyes and loading her voice with mesmer, the soothing, overpowering urge to calm down, to relax, to do precisely as the vampire says. Normally, this would be more than enough to deal with a human child, but Sarah, of course, is not human. She is a Bright Born, and mesmer does not affect her, as she jumps off the bed and scrambles for the mobile phone on the desk. Maria has never seen the need for young children to have them, but of course Temple would tell Sarah that if the evil vampires ever came, she must call him at once. As Sarah picks it up, Maria flashes over and knocks it out of her hand.

Sarah screams again, and tries to dart past Maria to the door. Maria seizes her and claps a hand over her mouth, ignoring the girl’s attempts to bite her – a spitfire, this one, and just as much trouble as a full-blooded de Clermont – and holds it there until Sarah begins to choke and splutter. Very well, if she thinks Maria a monster, she will have that. “Make another sound,” she whispers, “another squeak, and I will grind your bones for my bread.”

Sarah’s eyes are huge, blank with terror, and she kicks abortively as Maria glances around, pulls the quilt off the bed, and wraps Sarah up in it, throwing her over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She debates adding a gag, but Wyatt is probably not going to be thrilled to hear of this unceremonious extraction of his offspring, and Sarah is, for the moment, too limp with shock to scream or struggle. Maria looks at the clock – she is running low on time, and the blood from her neck has soaked into her shirt, more drops still oozing out and falling. She has to get back to Cecilia, and get out of here, now.

With a final scan around the room, Maria determines there is nothing else that urgently requires her attention. She briefly considers grabbing one of the dolls, but it is unlikely to convince Sarah of her benign intentions, and she resents Temple’s obsession with pink and lace and princesses for a young girl (beside the point, but still). She bounds out of the room and back down the stairs, to find Cecilia where she left her, staring vaguely into space. But at the scent of unexpected fresh blood, in the way vampires of less refined moral character have been known to feed on children to restore lost youth and vitality, Cecilia snaps upright. “Where is it?” she says, slurring. “Where?”

“No, not her.” Maria awkwardly juggles Sarah to the other arm, trying to keep her out of reach. She grabs the other woman, hoping that the nearness of her blood will break Cecilia’s fixation on Sarah’s. “Soon, Ceci. You can feed again when we reach safety. We have to – ”

Ignoring her, Cecilia lunges at Sarah, eyes black and fangs slavering with hunger, as Sarah utters an – understandable, Maria can admit – scream of terror and almost wrenches free, though Maria just manages to keep a grip on her. She deflects Cecilia at a bad angle, stumbling backward and hitting a side table that nearly gives out beneath the combined weight of her and the child. That fear is getting stronger. Maria does not have enough time to fight Cecilia, or enough hands to do it and defend her granddaughter, and troublesome as the girl may be, she did make Wyatt a promise. Besides, she’s still losing blood, they are on Temple’s ground and in his house, and all he would have to do is return at an opportune moment, bolt the door behind him, and have all three of them there, caught as neatly as hares in a snare. With Maria de Clermont in his grasp, he could do anything he liked, whether to barter her back to the witches in reparation for her crimes against their kind, or force the family to make terms of surrender, or throw her in Rittenhouse’s old tomb under Poveglia, just for the sadistic irony. She _cannot_ be caught here, and yet, something that has rarely happened in her millennia of life, Maria is not entirely sure that she can get out of this alone. A desperate, impossible pang of longing for Asher burns through her, more than ever. They always fought side by side, he was always there for her to cover her weak side in a battle, never told her that she should not do it when she decided that she must. It was rare, but when she took the field herself, there were none who could withstand it.

At that very moment, there is a muffled crash from down the hall, and the shadow of a tall man wavers on the wall. Maria stares at it madly, half-convinced despite all reason that her wanting has finally brought her husband back to her, even as she knows intellectually that it must be Temple and they are all done for. But it doesn’t smell like him, or even a vampire. The next instant, the other intruder rounds the corner. It’s Anton, and Maria can’t understand what he’s doing here, why he did not stay at home, or whether he thought she was in difficulty (not wrong) and would require rescue. But even as she opens her mouth, she realizes that it’s not. The man is younger, rougher and scruffier, has two black eyes, looks as if he has crawled through the Siberian wilderness and wrestled grizzly bears with his bare hands – and for that matter, perhaps he has. “YOU?” Gennady Sokolov says, goggling at the women (and girl) in their assorted states of disrepair. “Well, that is BIG SURPRISE.”

Maria starts to say something, but is distracted from any further conversational undertakings by the need to drop Sarah and defend herself against Cecilia’s next assault, screaming in pain as Cecilia bites her in the throat again. Freed from her vampire captor, Sarah rolls out of the quilt and runs wildly, colliding with Gennady’s legs, which she bounces off like tree trunks. He blinks and looks down, picking her up and settling her on his hip. “Is now OKAY, little lady,”  he says, attempting as comforting a smile as is possible with a countenance resembling ground meat. “I have GOT YOU. Will keep you SAFE.”

Whether because Gennady is a witch and feels more like Jessica than strange vampires, because he is the size of a baby whale and thus promises to squash all foes, or because of some genuinely effective nature of this statement, this actually works. Sarah wraps both arms around his neck and hisses at him in terror, and Gennady pats her gingerly on the back. “No, no,” he says. “We not run just yet. There is MINOR PROBLEM to sort first.”

With that, he puts Sarah carefully on the shelf like a precious knickknack, rolls up his torn sleeves, and wades forward, grabbing Cecilia and bodily pulling her off Maria. Cecilia snaps and thrashes at him, going for his throat, and Gennady throws up his arm to defend himself. He then yelps in pain as she sinks her fangs into that instead, but rather than immediately ripping her off, he allows her to suck for a few more moments. Then he clears his throat. “Lady,” he says politely. “Is obviously BAD TIMING, I know you are HUNGRY, but I ask if perhaps you like to stop biting me? I am needing that arm later for PUNCHING.”

There is a long, fraught moment in which Maria thinks that the younger Sokolov is insane to believe that asking nicely will get through to a vampire in the madness of hunger and deprivation, but something flickers in Cecilia’s clouded eyes. Then, slowly, she unclenches her jaws, revealing a florid bite mark sunk deep in the muscle of Gennady’s brawny forearm, and staggers backward. “Christ crucified,” she says hoarsely. “What is going on?”

“Ceci?” Maria gets to her feet, still worried of any too-close approach, and holds out both hands. “Ceci, is that you? Really – really you?”

“Madame?” Cecilia spins around with a look of horror. _“Madame!_ What are you doing here? No, no. You must leave. He could soon return.”

“I should have been here long since.” Maria wipes her throat, which doesn’t do much. “All our delusions, our silly ideas of trying to plan, to be careful, to avoid moving too fast – it was pointless and cowardly, it was ridiculous. We should have burst in here the instant you were taken, and I will burn this house to ashes and murder Michel with my bare hands to avenge what was done to you. I only hope you can one day forgive me.”

Cecilia does not appear to have heard this, staring in transfixed horror at Maria’s savaged, shredded neck. “Madame, did I – ”

“It is of no consequence, truly.” Maria turns to Gennady Sokolov. “What are you doing here? You have been missing for months. Was he holding you in the cellar?”

“I have been on RUN.” Gennady wipes his brow, looks around, sees Sarah trying to wriggle off the shelf, and lifts her back down, holding her firmly. “Have only just made it back to Venice. Was thinking to ATTACK evil son of – bad man, but I come and he is NOT HERE. Instead, I am finding – ” He waves his free hand, rather apologetically. “KERFUFFLE.”

Maria cannot deny that. She has many more questions, but they desperately need to get out of this house, and even with Anton’s spells, their current state is going to attract a lot of attention. She looks around, grabs a silk runner off the table, and wraps it around her head like a scarf, hiding the worst of the damage to her throat. “Cecilia, can you walk?”

“I am – yes. Yes, I am fine, Madame.” Cecilia rubs her face, tidying her tangled hair back and knotting it up in a messy approximation of her customary strict bun. She is still wearing the silver cuffs trailing their broken chains, burns visible on her wrists, but the pain must be too familiar to pay much notice. Another storm of guilt assaults Maria. “We must go now.”

As Sarah makes another move to indicate that she does not want to go, does not want to be kidnapped from what is her own home, Gennady economically claps a hand over her mouth and gives her a stern look. “No noises, YOUNG LADY. Will explain later.”

They make a ludicrously rag-tag party as they enter the kitchen, open the door onto the terrace, and climb over the garden wall. They drop down on the far side, the sudden light and wind and sound of city traffic hitting like a blow after the cloistered, stuffy stillness of the house, and Maria twists her head back to see it looming above them, silent and menacing. She cannot trust that they have gotten safe away, as if it will follow them somehow – and after all, evidence of their visit has been left everywhere, not least in the removal of Temple’s two precious prisoners. The instant he gets back and sees it – or if he suspects beforehand, and she has let William go alone, if Temple does not even wait for confirmation –

The four of them scramble down to the waterfront, where Gennady commandeers an unattended gondola, and he poles it swiftly into the midmorning rush. Sarah huddles under the seat on the far side, staring at Maria with fear and hatred. “Who – who are you?” she stammers. “What do you want? I know you’re evil! Uncle Michael said so!”

“Do you, child?” Maria considers that perhaps this is not altogether wrong, even as the sound of “Uncle Michael” bites like poison in her ears. “I apologize for the ungraceful circumstances of our meeting, but I have not come to hurt you. I came to take you away from there, and perhaps in the fullness of time, reunite you with your mother, whom your beloved Uncle Michael has most grossly used and abused. And, moreover, to introduce you to your father. My name is Maria de Clermont, and I am your grandmother.”

Sarah goggles at her. Finally she whispers, utterly baffled, “Grandmother?”

“Yes. My son William – Wyatt – is your father. Your mother never told us of your existence, so we never had a chance to effect introductions. Part – or indeed a great deal – of the fault for that is mine, and I apologize for it. I do not know what your mother has told you of us, or my son, but he is waiting to meet you, and has been most anxious to ensure your safety. So you shall travel there with us, until such time as your mother can be found.”

Sarah continues to stare at her. Maria wonders if this is not how one is supposed to speak to children – she is being as straightforward and clear as she can, she is laying out the relevant details, she even took responsibility for things having gone badly in the past. She does not believe in cooed sycophancy or false endearments, she will not treat Sarah as if she is some charming pet or diverting toy, and while she is sympathetic to the fact that the girl has learned the worst imaginable version of their characters, she will not tolerate fits of temper or brattish behavior or any attempt to run off or inform Temple of their whereabouts or anything else prejudicing the safety of the family. Whether or not she knows or appreciates it, Sarah is a de Clermont, and that comes with great responsibility, so well as protection. Wyatt asked Maria to see her that way, to treat her thus, and so she will, good and bad alike.

Cecilia glances between them, with a look on her face as if this is not the first time she has heard this information. If she saw Sarah at all during her captivity, doubtless the girl’s resemblance to her father would have been its own answer, but Maria knows that Cecilia has kept countless secrets for all the de Clermonts and never said a word. She turns her head to regard the chatelaine – she does not want to push her in the aftermath of her ordeal and when Maria herself feels so guilty for permitting it, but still. As Gennady vigorously steers them past a line of other boats, Maria slides closer to her. Quietly she says, “Did you know of the girl’s existence? Before this, I mean?”

“I did not. Not for certain.” Cecilia speaks slowly and haltingly, as if she has not done so for several weeks. “I only suspected. Several months after you and Monsieur forced William to end his relationship with Jessica, she made contact with me, while I was in Rouen for the summer. She was insistent that it was urgent, and at first I did not see why I should listen. But I must say, I felt that you and Monsieur had treated William unfairly, and I could give her the courtesy of a final meeting, some proper closure. When I arrived at the café, I did notice that Jessica was in the early stages of pregnancy, but I did not connect the two. After all, I had no reason to think that a vampire could sire a child upon a witch in the ordinary fashion, and it was not my business who she had taken up with after the end of that relationship. I asked her what was urgent, and Jessica – whatever she had been going to say, she did not. Finally she told me that she had taken up an academic post at Corpus Christi College, in Oxford, and was leaving for England. That the de Clermonts would not need to see or be troubled by her again, and she asked that I kept this a secret from them. So, as ever. I did.”

Cecilia’s voice is calm and level, and she continues to stare straight forward. Maria is the one who cannot look up, whose guilt builds and builds until it threatens to crush her like a discarded bit of rubbish. She knows that Cecilia is right, that she and Gabriel treated Wyatt unfairly – he was recently shouting as much at her, after all – and since Cecilia has just been through a grim ordeal precisely for knowing the de Clermonts’ secrets, as Temple tried in vain to pry them from her, she is entirely within her rights to be angry about it. Maria knows her well enough to tell that she is, that Cecilia is burning with a quiet rage – not at them, precisely, but at their obstinacy and their fearfulness and their opacity, how much they have kept from each other and relied on her to vouchsafe, all the mistakes they have made, how much they have let slip through their fingers, all the things that they should have had and held, and simply did not. The de Clermonts love each other deeply, but they have never been good at it, and especially after losing Christian and Asher, when their connecting parts were torn out, the ones who could actually manage that communication and compassion and forgiveness – small wonder, Maria thinks bitterly. Small wonder indeed.

They say very little more until Gennady turns them out of the Grand Canal and up the San Marco waterfront, poling to a halt and gallantly helping each of the ladies onto the quay. Maria feels exposed, wants to hurry them into cover, and they run to the de Clermonts’ townhouse, dodging inside. There they stand for several moments, not sure what to do or if even now they have gotten safe away. Then a voice says in Russian, “What in God’s name – is it – what are you – ?” and one Sokolov very swiftly becomes two, Anton is gripping his brother by the shoulders and shaking him and slapping his back and hugging him, and it is all very much a muddle.

Jiya and Jack appear shortly thereafter, Jiya lets out an exclamation and runs to Cecilia, and there is further chaos as everyone tries to tell their side of the story at once. Maria wants to slip out unobtrusively, but she cannot help but notice that Wyatt has not returned, and does not know whether this is down to some clever deceit of Temple or because Temple himself has exacted swift recompense for the loss of his hostages. Should she go to San Marco? She should. As soon as she changes her shirt and gets the blood off. She does not much care whether it is there or not, but she recognizes that it would be alarming to the humans.

Maria staggers upstairs, remembers that Rufus was going to be checking on Liechtenstein and whether the castle was safe, and decides that she should see to that first. She veers into the room where he is working on his computers, though she must have done this silently enough that Rufus jumps a foot and lets out a startled curse. “Jesus Christ, you scared me. You’re back, then? It’s okay? Are _you_ okay?”

“I am quite well,” Maria says, ignoring the large drop of blood that has just splashed into the carpet. That is somewhat frustrating, it will be difficult to get out, and the furnishings in this house have been here since the seventeenth century and are all priceless. Yet the damage of a carpet is utterly trivial just now. “Liechtenstein. Whatever you were doing, did you do it? Is my son safe?”

“I ran all the checks and scans that I could think of,” Rufus says. “Uplinked into a Swiss satellite and managed to get some high-def images, and once I checked the geotags and made sure they were within the specified coordinate grid, I broke them down as far as I could. Then I – ” At her blank look, he realizes that none of this means anything to her, and starts again. “Long story short, I got some pictures of the place where the castle is, checked signals traffic, and ended up hacking the snow-conditions webcam of the Malbun ski resort, the database of the Landespolizei, and some kid in Vaduz who’s building a radio transmitter array in his backyard. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, or anything that looked like Temple and his cronies were there. I mean, I’m a human, not a creature, and could have missed something that was blindly obvious to you, but…. yeah.”

“Thank you.” Words also seem foreign and uncooperative to Maria, thick and strange. She has been wary of Rufus by virtue of that humanity and of course the fact that he is her granddaughter’s boyfriend, but with no special powers or supernatural protection, he is still fighting as hard as any of them. “You are very clever. With the computers, and the – webcamera. So Gabriel’s hiding place is safe?”

“For now? Maybe?” Rufus swivels back to inspect something on his array of screens. “I’ll keep a very close eye on it, but Temple was a little busy today. Did you get them back?”

“Yes. They are downstairs.” Maria coughs. The ground has gotten even further away beneath her feet. “Now if you will excuse me, I need to go find my – ”

“Hold on.” Rufus gets up with a concerned look. “Did one of his goons attack you? Because no offense, you don’t look good.”

“Cecilia was hungry after her captivity, that was all.” Maria unwinds the scarf, only to discover that it is soaked with blood, sticking to her neck and sucking in the wounds, and Rufus gets a mildly horrified look. “It was my fault. We had no right to leave her as long as we did, assuming that she would simply be strong enough to endure it, and that we could take for granted that she would say nothing to Temple. Now we wait for the storm, or – ”

“Come on, let’s go find Jiya, or – or something.” Rufus offers his arm, and while he is rather foolish to presume that she needs his help, Maria allows him to tow her out. He takes her down the hall to her room, and she sits down on the bed, staring at her hands with abstract, bemused interest. There. No killing, just as she promised Wyatt. She has even done what they set out to do. So why does she feel so utterly wretched, so wrenched apart and wounded on some level far beyond the physical? She deserved the pain, she deserved to be seized and drained, she knows that Cecilia did not mean it and could not control it, and was in that position in the first place because of her loyalty to the de Clermonts – a loyalty that they have so little merited in return. She will atone this somehow, Maria thinks. She must. But for the long and ancient and cursedly eternal life of her, she is not sure how she can.

She lies down on the bed, and sinks into a trancelike, stupefied sleep. Vampires do not dream, but she wakes in some half-reality, some soft gloaming, convinced that Asher is there, that he will soothe her and lick her wounds and hold her close, and her heart will be at ease, and she will breathe. But when she grasps out over the sheets, they are still empty, and Maria almost cries in frustration and fury and agony. She does not want to be awake, she is not sure if she even has the will to live. She sinks back under like a stone and hopes she is never pulled out.

There is no way to tell how much later it is when she finally awakes, and she lies flat on her back, staring up at the rococo ceiling. Someone has straightened her out and stripped off the bloody clothes and put her to bed properly, and her wounds have been licked and bandaged. Maria is not certain that she deserves so much mercy, and tries to summon her dry throat to words. Where are they? Where is Wyatt? Is it over, or scarcely begun?

She drifts into a tortured doze, sleeps more, and it is dark when she wakes again. She has been stirred by motion, and as she peels her eyes open, she spots her granddaughter, apparently having been sent in to check on her. Seeing that she has roused her, Jiya looks apologetic. “I’m sorry, Grand-mère. I’ll just – ”

“No.” Maria makes a feeble motion, bereft of her usual autocracy, beckoning her to sit. “No, I need – I need to know. How long have I been – ? Where is your uncle?”

“The rest of the day, the night and day after that, and now the evening.” Jiya perches on the edge of the covers. “Uncle Wyatt is back, but it’s – there’s a lot going on. Temple is – he didn’t take it well, and the Knights of Lazarus say that none of us should leave the house right now. It’s a siege.”

Maria absorbs that grimly. “So what? We are trapped here?”

“Uncle Wyatt wants to return to Sept-Tours. He thinks it’ll be safer, no matter what. He just hasn’t figured out how to get us all there in our present state, and Sarah has hidden in her room and will only talk to Gennady Sokolov. If we tried to take her through a human airport, anyone would reasonably conclude that we were kidnapping her.”

“Gennady.” Maria plucks at one of her countless web of questions. “Where was he?”

“On the run. The Black Sea area, I think, though he’s being pretty closed-mouthed. Also something in Ukraine. He was coming back to attack Temple, but he picked the day he was out.” Jiya manages half a smile. “Mind you, he’s still more than happy to try it now.”

“Cecilia?” The name cuts Maria’s mouth like a razor blade, but she has to know. “Cecilia, how is – did she – did Temple torture her?”

“I – ” Jiya’s mouth goes grim. “I think there was some element of that, yes. He definitely tried to make her talk, and pulled out any number of nasty stops, but she didn’t tell him anything. I explained what went on, why we didn’t come after her sooner. Cecilia says that she understands and she didn’t want us to put ourselves in danger, but…” Jiya trails off. “She’s angry, and I don’t blame her.”

No, Maria thinks. Nor does she. She lies there, trying to work with that, what to do about it, even as she feels stunted and weak and helpless and heartbroken in a way that she can hardly stand. “Is she better, at least? Has she been cared for?”

“I’ve been looking after both of you. Jack pitched in, he’s been really good, he knows what Temple’s like and what he did, so he’s been helping her. So there’s that.” Jiya tries to look reassuring, even as her lips tremble. “Rufus has been monitoring Liechtenstein like a hawk, and Anton and Gennady are helping Uncle Wyatt with security. We can hold out a little longer here, if we have to, but after that, I don’t know what’s going to happen. With the Congregation, or us, or… anything.”

“I agree that we should try to make it to Sept-Tours.” Maria would rather be there, in the family’s ancestral fortress and stronghold, with their own folk around them, than here in this nest of vipers and traitors, but she can see the difficulties inherent in returning. “Once we are stronger, and once Sarah has been persuaded to our way of thinking. Do we still have no notion where Jessica is? Or when?”

“Just the book that Rufus and I found in Bologna, from 1484, and she could have gone anywhere by now.” Jiya looks away, the same shame and helplessness visible on her face. “I don’t think Temple has managed to retrieve her yet, but that could be another thing that just shot up his to-do list. I don’t know, Grand-mère. I don’t know how we fight this. Or any of them. I just don’t.”

Maria does not answer. At last, she reaches out and squeezes her granddaughter’s hand, a clumsy comfort, but Jiya squeezes back.  They remain there, holding hands in the darkness, facing the towering terror of the unknown future, until Jiya lets go and gets to her feet. “You should sleep some more,” she says. “I’ll be back later.”

Maria does not want her to go, even as she knows that she cannot ask her to stay, and so she says nothing. Once more, as ever, alone in her bed, she closes her eyes and drowns.

When she finally wakes up again, it is light, it is morning, and she feels somewhat better, even if raw and ravenous with hunger. Once she has dressed and made her way downstairs, thus to startle everyone with her resurrection, she is about to leave the house in search of a feed before remembering that they cannot. Jack volunteers to let her take it from him, and as she is doing so, Maria notices again the fact that he is very handsome – something that she immediately wants to burn and scald from her brain. If he is telling the truth about his origins, Jack was a sort of foster son or younger brother to Christian, which makes him essentially her grandson, and besides, it is not him that she wants, not him or any other man living. But it is nigh on seventy-five years since her husband’s death, and for all the centuries of their marriage, they rarely went more than a few days without making love, except when Asher was abroad or on campaign somewhere. She is dried and withered, an old widow, and yet despite several close shaves and a strong desire to be so, she is not _dead._ Maria cannot even consider the idea of taking a lover, would be repulsed as much as soothed by it, and yet the flesh is fickle. She wants Asher, she only wants Asher, and yet she still cannot have him.

She finishes the feed rather quickly, makes a note not to do so from Jack in future, and thanks him for the service. Once she returns to the front of the house, she glances at Wyatt, who seems relieved to see her awake. _“Maman.”_

“Wyatt.” Maria sits down across from him. “Are you – have you seen her?”

“My… daughter?” Wyatt weighs the word. “Only briefly. She won’t come out of her room, she still thinks we’re trying to kill her. Gennady brings her food, he’s trying to coax her out, but she – I don’t know. Temple’s good at tricking powerful adult creatures. A six-year-old kid… it’s going to take a while to get her out of whatever he told her.”

“I’m sorry.” Maria feels as if her tears are going to rise up in her chest, and the dam will burst, and drown her in truth. “I am so sorry for everything that I did to you, myself and Gabriel, about Jessica and your relationship and why she never told you about Sarah and everything that has happened as a result. I have caused so much damage not just to my enemies, but to my own family, to everyone I love the most. If your father was here, he would – he would be ashamed. Of this, and me, and all of it.”

“If Papa was here, this wouldn’t have – ” Wyatt stops, then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, we can’t play that game. You know we can’t. He was who he was, he was so good at many things, but he wasn’t a god. He couldn’t have predicted or anticipated everything, we can’t assume that he would just have avoided all the mistakes the rest of us stumbled into. Either way, he’s dead _._ He’s gone. He’s been gone for a long time. And I know you can’t accept that, and none of us can either, and we’ve been running away from it, and we haven’t seen what’s in front of us as a result. But it’s… it’s true.”

Once more, Maria does not answer. It lies there huge and terrible and inescapable, a simple fact that they have bent over backward trying not to acknowledge, and it sets off another burst of grief in her chest like shrapnel, until she cannot remember anything or any way to exist without it, apart from it. Wyatt does not speak, does not force her to repeat it or to go on from it, and still it hangs there. Then Maria says, “If we are under siege, we have two choices. One, to sit here meekly and wait to be starved out, to be broken, to stumble out in shambling and abject surrender. Or we go forth to meet it, to choose our fate on our own terms, and to make a final stand. I know which I myself would prefer.”

Wyatt glances at her. “What are you suggesting?”

“We are still in Venice.” Maria sits back in her chair. “We have Cecilia, we have Gennady Sokolov, we have Sarah, we have multiple proofs of Temple’s treachery and violence. I cherish absolutely no hope at all that actually seeing it would make any difference to those who have made up their minds, but that is beside the point. The Congregation has become a sham, a hollow farce, and so we expose it for that. We show them straight, and all the creatures of the world, what exactly they are dealing with, and then – ”

“What?” Wyatt starts to frown. “Walk into the Congregation and flaunt them in front of a bunch of creatures who hate our guts? Get us all in one place so they can more conveniently kill us? _Maman,_ I’m not sure that you’re entirely – ”

“We do not need to take them all.” Maria feels that clear and calm resolution that comes in the wake of a final decision, when the only way out is through. “You and I paid a visit to the Congregation once before, where they stripped you of your position and exiled our family, condemned Garcia and Lucy and made us outlaws. Now, Temple offered you that seat back. As you said, he has no right to take it, and so you walk in and act as if it was never lost. You accuse him, you lay bare what he has done and what he continues to do. After that – ” She shrugs. “The creature world listens to us, or it does not. Either way, no more lies.”

Wyatt continues to look at her as if she has lost her mind (it is probable, entirely so). At last he says, “And if you and I go, then what about the others? We just leave them here to – ”

“No.” Maria can see it, can see it so clearly that she wonders that he cannot. “One more distraction, like before. While you and I take the fire from our enemies, the others get out of Venice and make for Sept-Tours. Anton and Gennady can fly, as you will recall. Jiya, Cecilia, and Jack can run. Between the lot of them, they can take Sarah and Rufus. Perhaps we join them, or – ” She shrugs. “Perhaps we do something else.”

Wyatt opens his mouth, then shuts it. It’s true that this offers a chance of getting the others out of here, and has to be considered on those grounds alone. As well, he must feel the same desire to return to the site of their disgrace, to lay bare the depths of Temple’s malice and malevolence, and force the vampires, and the creatures in general, to make a choice about who they are listening to and what they are allowing to happen. Whether or not it is dangerous no longer enters into any of it. At last he says, “So you think we could pull it off?”

“I do.” Maria smiles, faint and wintry. “Do you?”

“I…” Wyatt looks down at the grandmaster ring on his hand, the burden that he has borne so unevenly, struggled with so much, and takes a deep breath, clenching a fist. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I think we can.”

That, therefore, is what they tell the others. To Maria’s surprise, the objections are few, though Jiya is inclined to go with them. “No,” Maria says. “No. I need you to be the head of the family, to take my place. For as briefly or as long as it may be.”

“I – ” Jiya looks stunned. “Grand-mère, I can’t – I can’t be you.”

“No,” Maria says. “No, and nor do I want you to be. I do not want you to be anything like how I have been. You could be a far greater queen than me, and I fully intend for your uncle and myself to return to Sept-Tours, with your other uncles and Lucy – and if we can find her, Jessica. She should have been made welcome long since and treated as part of the family, and I mean to rectify that fault. But we must do this first.”

Jiya considers that, then nods. She still looks intimidated, but not terrified, and not as if this is beyond her by its very nature. Maria is so proud of her that she can scarcely breathe, and knows that Garcia would be too, and then she misses Garcia and Gabriel so much that she dies a little after all, and wonders if the time will ever come again when she can do more than tally her ghosts. Come back, she thinks, to all the distant and scattered and lost pieces of her heart that lie in the dark and the dust. I have waited so long for you, and so alone. Come back.

The next morning, everything goes coolly and efficiently. The Knights of Lazarus will run interference to make sure that everyone gets out of Venice, and accompany them as far as they can, but then turn back to be prepared for whatever Wyatt and Maria might unleash at the Congregation. Gennady Sokolov has successfully convinced Sarah that this will be a fun excursion and that she will get to fly with him, so Maria has hope that the girl will not pose too much of a distraction. There are not much in the way of goodbyes. Nobody wants to act as if this might be the last time they see each other, and while Wyatt looks at his daughter as if he still cannot fathom her existence, as if he will see her safe or literally die trying, he does not try to say anything to her, to move closer when she does not trust him and has barely acknowledged that he is in fact her father. Once they have gone, and the house is empty except for Wyatt and Maria, he stares at it like a man woken from a sleep of a hundred years and not sure what happened to the life he used to know. Then he steels his shoulders, draws a deep breath, and says, _“Maman,_ let’s go.”

By now, none of them have been out of the house in days, and Maria once more experiences it as a shock, as the breaking of a cocoon or the tearing of a caul, something raw and naked beneath the great eye of the world. It is a pleasant morning, warm with the greenness of coming spring. She follows her son to the gondola, and they climb in together. Maria feels quite settled, clear-eyed, resolute. As they push away from the bank, and into the flow of the current, she does not have any temptation to look back.

They reach the Congregation headquarters at ten o’clock, as the countless bells of Venice are singing the hour, and neither of them pause or knock or wait permission or otherwise act as if they have anything less than the absolute right to be here. Wyatt strides in with magnificently contemptuous mien, his greatcoat swirling behind him. “Good morning,” he says, voice booming in the chamber. “I have been looking forward to seeing you all again.”

“Wyatt de Clermont, indeed?” Benjamin Cahill looks up with a start. “Not that I am not delighted to see such an old friend, but we had not been informed that you – ”

“Perhaps not.” Wyatt comes to a halt in the middle of the floor, as Maria steps up next to him. She flicks her gaze around the benches, assessing. Of the witches, Cahill is there, but Emma Whitmore, who took Anton’s seat, is not. For the daemons, the odious Nicholas Keynes is unfortunately present – as is their own Harry Houdini. It is the first time he has seen them in the flesh, or vice versa, since he publicly defected, and he stares down at them with no expression whatsoever, a perfectly unreadable mask. But Temple himself is not present, and Wyatt raises an eyebrow. “Someone afraid to face the music?”

“If you mean my vampire colleague,” Cahill says, “he has been distracted by a recent brazen assault upon his property and person. For which, we hear, your mother was responsible? Once more, the de Clermonts feel that they can do whatever they wish without reciprocation, and leave the rest of us to suffer their enormities.”

Wyatt laughs. So, for that matter, does Maria. It is transparently clear that Cahill thinks he’s baiting them, that he will goad them into indignantly defending themselves and dancing to his tune, and yet, for all that they came here with a mind to recite Temple’s indignities in open court, both of them realize just then that there is no need, at least not right now. It matters less than nothing. Laughing at Cahill is much more useful than pretending to submit themselves to his arbitration and authority. Maria supposes he has embarked on just as vigorous a career of felonies, and has no intention of stopping. Indeed, his face flushes at the sight of their evident unconcern for his censure. “Do you not take this charge seriously?”

“Congratulations,” Wyatt says. “No, I don’t. In fact, I’m here to claim my seat back, because none of you had the authority to take it from me in the first place. And none of that involves answering to you, to him over there, or anyone. And since that’s the case – ”

“You are correct,” a voice says, from the far side of the room. “If not for the reason you think. I must say, I thought you had reached the limits of your temerity after what you did the other day, but if not – well. I can, if nothing else, respect that.”

Heads turn across the chamber, Cahill and Keynes and the handful of onlookers and Congregation drones and other creatures who have wandered in to watch the show. Michael Temple steps out of the shadows – except that this is not the face he has presented to the world for the last several hundred years, the successful businessman, the politician and philanthropist and slick modern man. This is Michel of Antioch, dressed in full Knights Templar regalia, the order that he played a pivotal role in betraying and handing over to Philip IV of France to be tortured and executed. He is wearing the white tabard with the red cross, the chain mail and cloak and hood, sword strapped at his waist, and he smiles. “Come now, Knights of Lazarus. I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours.”

“Good morning, asshole.” Wyatt manages it after only a brief pause, as Maria’s spine stiffens. “Decided to play a little dress-up for dramatic effect?”

Michel laughs, fangs bared, eyes black and savage. “I came appropriately dressed for a war. Since that seems to be what you are intent on starting here, but once again, I only extend the hand of charity and mercy. For you see, once and for all, there is no need for it, or for any of this rancor and enmity between us. I am bringing the creature world back into the harmony and unity and supremacy it always deserved, and I have a feeling that my honored witch colleague will welcome it the most of all. This is what – is _who –_ what we have always wanted, is it not? What we have always striven for? Ladies and gentlemen, our founder, our purpose, our great genius, freed at last from the durance vile in which the de Clermonts treacherously threw him. Welcome him home.”

Maria feels a lightning bolt sear through her from head to toe, rooting her to the floor, as Michel makes a motion, and the second man steps out. He too is dressed in Templar attire, though it does not suit him quite as well, as he is smaller and shorter and far less commanding in presence. Still, the effect is anything but amusing, his presence anything but trifling, as David Rittenhouse gazes down at the blank, stunned faces below, exulting in their disbelief. Benjamin Cahill starts to his feet, then goes to his knees. “My lord,” he says, strangled, shocked. “My lord, how are you – after all this time, all we have sought to – is this real, are you possibly here, how can it – ”

“Peace, peace.” Rittenhouse waves a magisterial hand. “All will be revealed in due time. This is the greatest day in creature history. This is what we were always meant to be and to do. My good, my _great_ friend Michael has unloosed me, as he said, from the filthy hole where the traitor Asher de Clermont threw me. There is no further need for division between our kind, between vampires and witches and daemons. All are one, and all will bow to me. I have come to restore the peace, and to take my rightful place. The Congregation – feeble, useless, infighting farce that it was – is officially dissolved. Henceforth there is only me, and those loyal to my rule.”

“My lord – ” Cahill continues to stare up at Rittenhouse, with blind, fervid, disbelieving adoration. “All my life, I have only sought the mystery of how to free you, to bring this about – I will be the most loyal, the greatest herald of your coming, the witches and anything else that I can offer are at your command – ”

“Good.” Rittenhouse smiles. “Good. I thought as much, and am pleased to see that I am not to be disappointed. And you, daemon? How do you greet me?”

“I – ” Nicholas Keynes has been caught off guard, and takes a moment to formulate a response. “Is this some other trick, some conspiracy between vampires and witches, to oppress our kind as usual? Another relegation of daemons to the bottom of the heap, to – ”

“No, not in the least.” Rittenhouse spreads his hands. “The only distinction that matters is between magical and non-magical, between supernatural and mortal, between the precious blood of creaturekind and the filth of the humans – and the traitors – who wish to remain weak and puling and contemptuous. Daemons are full citizens in my new world. I will heal all the old divisions, all the dark places, all the rules that kept us apart. None of us will be afraid or weak again. None of us will ever bow, or hold ourselves back.”

“You.” Maria does not know that she meant to speak, but it bursts out of her. “You miserable liar. You _wrote_ the Covenant. You had the greatest role in founding the Congregation. You ensured that the creatures were kept apart for centuries, you were the one who laid the foundation for all this mistrust, so no one could be strong enough to challenge you. Divide and conquer, to lay us low with your tyrannical yoke, to – ”

“I weary of the hysterical and baseless accusations of Asher de Clermont’s withered relict.” Rittenhouse gazes down at her with fathomless black eyes. “I have met your sons, in the past from which I have only recently returned. They are no credit to him or to you, but perhaps you are used to disappointment, my lady. Yet as my friend says, the hand of friendship can still be extended even now. Repent, turn away, decry your husband’s heretical action in imprisoning me, and accept a high place in my new kingdom. Kneel.”

“No.” Maria tilts her head back and stares dead into the monster’s face. “Never.”

“I said.” Rittenhouse raises a fist, and she can feel a mighty force punching her legs, trying to shove her down. _“Kneel.”_

“Leave the bitch.” Harry Houdini gets to his feet, his voice bored and careless. He looks at Maria with no more interest or concern than if she was a piece of blowing rubbish. “She is brainwashed, all the de Clermonts are. My master and I are delighted to accept your offer to the daemons, and to join with you in your mighty new realm.”

“Are you?” Rittenhouse turns away from Maria, the pressure relents, and she tries not to stagger. “Do you indeed? That is welcome news. The creature world is mine now. I am here to reshape it as I would have done long ago. Do you give me anything I ask?”

“Yes.” Keynes follows Cahill’s lead in going to his knees, as the other creatures present do the same – because they believe Rittenhouse, or because they want to avoid getting on his bad side, is uncertain. “My lord, myself and all daemons are at your service.”

Rittenhouse smiles wider, and keeps smiling, baring twisted fangs, as he raises his hands in exultation, and a mighty wind starts to sweep through the Congregation chamber, tearing away papers, hangings, symbols, anything else that bears any sign of the past. Everyone gazes up at him as if hypnotized, and Maria sees Wyatt’s hand slip into his jacket and hit the stop button on the device that Rufus gave him. It has been concealed there the whole time, it has been taking a video of everything that happened since they entered here, and it is of paramount importance that it is allowed to circulate. They must get the word out. They must warn the other creatures of what has been done here today, who has been revealed, and what that means. It is the only chance. For them, and for everyone.

And so – as Rittenhouse stands on high, as the creatures kneel, as Temple, Cahill, and Keynes bend in homage to their new master, as the wind swirls the papers wildly, and all shred of the old world burns – Wyatt and Maria turn, and make their escape, and one last time, they run.


	23. In the Dark of the Night

For a very long moment – bad as this situation is and could still get even worse – Flynn nonetheless can only feel something madly akin to sick relief. He didn’t blame Lucy for it, since there wasn’t much else she could do with him unconscious, but he was never easy about the prospect of leaving Asher and Christian without a proper goodbye. Not like this, not after everything that it was to see them again, and how sorely his heart rebels against the necessity of returning to a future without them, even if it’s been that way for years and years. When he’s been in a place and time where they’re alive, the grief of losing them will hit him all over again when they’re gone, and he’s been trying not to think about it. But even if the timing is absolutely execrable, even if they need to get Christian out of here immediately before Rittenhouse arrives – he’s _here._ It lurches through Flynn and leaves him breathless, and he drops the Ashmole pages and leaps out of the pentacle like a demon spotting an opportunity to devour its master. “Jesus Christ! Christian, what are you – ”

“Uncle Garcia?” His nephew goggles at him in utter disbelief, no hint of recognition or understanding in his eyes. “What are _you_ doing here? I left you in France.”

Ah. Yes. It hits Flynn too hard to deflect, and he has to turn away. Christian has no idea what they’ve been through, in the last months. He doesn’t know why Flynn is here in company with four witches, two daemons (one of them holding a fuse tantalizingly close to a barrel of gunpowder), Sir Walter Raleigh, and other prominent members of Elizabethan intellectual circles, setting a trap with a priceless manuscript to catch a fiendishly dangerous supernatural villain. Even more, Christian is not alone. In the light from the open door, Flynn can see Jack standing on the threshold. Christian must have brought him to London, perhaps didn’t remember that he was attached to him and wanted to return him home, but since Jack was Rittenhouse’s thrall, that might also serve to attract him. Right now, when they’re all off guard and not prepared for it, and after everything, that is the one thing they can’t afford.

“Snuff the candles!” Flynn barks at a startled Raleigh, before spinning on the witches and slashing a hand across his throat. “Kill the spell! Right now!”

Since they have just gotten to actually put this precarious plan into practice, and aren’t sure if they will get another chance, there is a brief resistance to this order. Then Lucy understands, even if Agnes, Amelie, and Lady Beaton don’t, and shuts off the spell. The roof and walls of the solar rematerialize like smoke, then slam back into place, and Guy Fawkes blows out his fuse with a look of deep disappointment. The silence as Christian takes in this bizarre tableau is excruciating. Then he says again, “Uncle Garcia, who are these people?”

“I – ” Flynn isn’t sure that he can possibly explain. “Christian, this is not – this is not a good time, all right? Perhaps if you go down to the kitchen and have Parry bring you some – ”

“How did you get here so fast?” Rather than retreating, as he might have done before, Christian advances. His face is hard, his eyes wary, and he beckons brusquely to Jack to stay where he is, clearly not trusting this motley crew of creatures to play by the rules. “Christopher Marlowe, is that you? Aren’t you Papa’s – friend?”

“The lord Gabriel and I are passably acquainted, yes.” Kit cocks his head, staring narrowly at Christian. “And you’ve seen me recently enough to know that, so what you play at by – ”

“It’s complicated,” Lucy interrupts. Flynn can see the guilt in her eyes, the fear that she somehow botched the memory spell or is otherwise responsible for this, when she knows as well as he does that Christian can’t be here without serious complications. “Christian, this is hard to understand, but – ”

“Who is this witch?” Christian stares at her with no hint of recognition or warmth, and Lucy flinches. “We have not met, madam. Why do you address me so familiarly?”

“We have, we – we have.” Lucy bites her lip, and Flynn moves to put a protective arm around her, which Christian looks at in even more confusion. “You can’t remember it, but – what we’re trying to do here, you just have to – ”

“You were in France, Uncle Garcia,” Christian repeats stubbornly. “When I left. I did not know that you had plans to return to London, or I assume we would have traveled together. Now I find you here in company with some disreputable lot of – ”

“Beg your pardon,” Guy Fawkes interrupts. “You know me too, you brought me by your own invitation to that bloody meeting they had back in summer. Now you mean to feign as if you’ve never seen me before, you arrogant vampire son of a – ”

“It’s my fault,” Lucy interjects again, as if to keep Fawkes from getting too steamed. “Why he can’t remember you, that is. Can everyone please take a deep breath and… not jump to conclusions? Christian, can you take Jack downstairs, and then we’ll – ”

“You know him too?” Christian takes a few steps backward. “This urchin? I found him in London and brought him back to Sept-Tours, but I thought that he might be happier in the city of his birth, so after – after – ”

He frowns, shaking his head, as if he was on the brink of recalling the real reason he came here, but not quite. Even if Lucy erased the surface memory of murdering Kelley, she clearly cannot scour away the deeper damage, the scars where nobody can see, and Flynn’s heart twists like a fist. There is an extremely tenuous pause. Then Christian says, “If you will not tell me who these folk are or who that woman is, Uncle Garcia, then what – have you been lying to the others, to Papa, to all of us? What is going on here? You look to be performing some act of dark magic, for _what?”_

“There’s no way this can make sense, I’m sorry. But Christian, listen to me.” Flynn moves toward him, holding out his hands, but Christian continues to back away. “I’m not trying to lie, I’m not trying to hurt you, or go behind everyone’s back. The woman is your aunt Lucy, you just don’t remember her either. She was the one who – ”

“Aunt Lucy?” Christian utters it incredulously, and not that warmly, and Lucy flinches again, clearly hearing the echoes of the way he used to say it, with love and trust. “You married a witch? Does Papa know about this?”

“Gabriel – ” Flynn is not going to have this argument, not _again_. “Christian, just – ”

At that moment, something happens. The candles which Raleigh just snuffed suddenly lurch back to life, the roof turns oddly translucent and shimmering as water, and a cold wind sweeps the room, rattling the Ashmole pages. There’s a sound like a far-off train or a speeding tidal wave, and everyone’s heads jerk up in the same horrified realization that they have not pulled the plug after all. It’s too late. They’ve gone too far, they can’t turn back, they cannot stop it. It is happening. Rittenhouse – or something else – is coming.

“Get back!” Flynn roars at Christian, waving his arms wildly. “Jesus! Get back! You and Jack, just – get out of here, right now!”

Christian remains where he is, stunned and blindsided, not sure whether he should trust this possibly-false Flynn or if whatever is coming is worse (answer: worse). He’s still dangerously close to the pentacle, and as Flynn grabs at the escaping Ashmole pages, he realizes that he has to jump back into it to replace them. But that gives him mere seconds to get out before the full force of the magic hits, and if he mistimes it, he will be trapped inside it as well, trussed up and left out to dry for Rittenhouse. It’s not clear if the witches still have control of the process, or if the magical threads have been ripped free from their hands like a breaking elevator cable, backlashing on anyone who tries to snatch it. Flynn can’t waste time asking. He scoops up the pages, takes a running start, and vaults over the flaming lines of the star, landing directly in the central circle.

The force slams him in the chest like a brick wall, and he staggers. He is well aware that his last venture into this sort of action resulted in him being knocked unconscious for six weeks, but at least his past self is not here to complicate the process. Just David fucking Rittenhouse, which is not an improvement, and Flynn piles the pages into place as fast as he can, feeling the magical walls rising higher and higher. He is distantly aware of someone, possibly Lucy, screaming at him to get out of there, and he intends to do that, but he can’t take the risk of Rittenhouse getting free, not with Christian right there. The magic is about to rise over his head, trapping him and locking him down, as he gathers himself and leaps twelve feet straight up like a launching rocket – just as something snatches wildly at his ankle. The next instant, Flynn rolls free by the skin of his fangs, his clothes smoking and his arm caught badly under him, and David Rittenhouse has materialized inside the fiery cage.

Flynn lies flat, trying to recollect himself. His arm would have broken if he was a human, and it takes a moment to decide that it hasn’t, snapping back into place with a painful pop. He scrambles backward on all fours, staring at Rittenhouse. The monster’s expression of exultant greed turns swiftly to incredulity, then disbelief, then rage at the realization of the trap. But he does not dwell upon his misfortunes. Instead he raises both hands, which flare with infernal fire, and begins to tear the pentacle apart.

Lucy, Lady Beaton, Agnes, and Amelie start a new spell with frantic speed, exerting their combined power to resist the escape attempt. Lucy is directing and channeling it from the other three, her hands burning a dazzling white as she fights back against Rittenhouse, their competing currents of magic crackling and spitting sparks. But he’s strong enough that he is still making headway, and Lucy is pushed backward on the floor, leaving scorch marks, even as hard as she tries to stop herself. Flynn scrambles to his feet, looks around madly for Christian and Jack, and can’t see them in the glare. They’re not near Rittenhouse, at least, and that has to be enough. He reaches out, catches Lucy from behind, and braces.

With his supernatural strength, that means she stops sliding back, though he can still feel the strain as she battles to hold her ground. The lines of the pentacle bulge and burst like overloaded steel as Rittenhouse bashes them with a raw power that even the four witches together can barely counteract. The next instant, as Lucy gasps with pain, the last tethers snap, and Rittenhouse surges free.

Everyone moves at once, in some blind, desperate instinct. Flynn throws Lucy behind him, then leaps, grabs Rittenhouse by the ankle, and just manages to tackle him to the floor before the monster thrashes at him like a kraken and Flynn tastes a burst of blood in his mouth. Dazed, he falls back, just as Kit dives in to take his place. Marlowe too can only hold Rittenhouse for a few moments before his hands begin to blacken and blister, but he remains where he is, tenacious as an attacking pit bull, as a few of Rittenhouse’s precious Ashmole pages tumble out of his coat. Raleigh is the one to lunge for those, as Rittenhouse shrieks in rage at the theft, crumples Kit aside like a used tissue, and charges.

Raleigh is human, even if a brave and experienced soldier, and there’s no way he will be able to resist a magical monster that has made short work of four witches, one vampire, and one daemon. Flynn is desperate to get up again, but can’t quite make his blasted body cooperate, and he thinks in horror that he will just have to watch as Raleigh’s head is torn off and the rest of Ashmole 782 is ripped out of their grasp for good. But then there’s a blur, a rush, and Christian appears from absolutely nowhere, tackling Rittenhouse full on and sending them somersaulting with the force of their combined momentum. He punches Rittenhouse in the face, Rittenhouse snarls and snaps and sinks his gnarled fangs into Christian’s throat and _rips,_ and somehow, Flynn doesn’t know how, he finds enough strength to leap.

He crashes down like a cannonball, barely avoids Christian, and hits Rittenhouse as hard as he can, over and over, possessed of a transcendent and desperate fury. Flynn doesn’t even know what it is, aside from the fact that he is not, not in all the years and decades and centuries that he has lived, about to watch his son be murdered in front of him again, and that is just that. His hands are burning like Kit’s, his throat is charring, his mouth is open and he is yelling, snarling, as he tears his own fangs into Rittenhouse’s neck and chokes on the foul, sooty, poisonous bile of his blood. He doesn’t let go, wrestling Rittenhouse ferociously across the floor inch by inch, the remnants of the pentacle scorching them both, until he jerks his head back, fangs sodden black, and bellows, “LUCY! NOW!”

For an instant, he doesn’t know if she’s heard or if she’s able to do anything about it, and all of time and space exists in an empty and immeasurable void. Then the dark room lights up with blazing golden glow, and Corra the firedrake soars out from her mistress – not quite as big as a dragon this time, but the size of a large eagle, and she folds her wings and dive-bombs with intent, deadly speed. Flynn rolls free, Corra attacks Rittenhouse, and uses her burning claws to tear his jacket open, scattering the other Ashmole pages in wild disarray across the floor. Flynn is aware of people throwing themselves headlong to catch them, as Rittenhouse screams in fury and breaks loose from Corra’s clutches. He clenches both fists, spins them together, and throws them out, unleashing a blast like a nuclear explosion.

Everything turns white. Flynn can’t see and can barely hear, except for a distant, tinny ringing in his ears. He can only think about Lucy and Christian, keeps crawling desperately in the direction that he last saw them, only to realize that he can’t be sure that his body is moving at all. The stark, sizzling afterglare is burned onto his brain, blinding and dizzying him, scorching his chest to ash, and he wonders, after coming so close the last time, if he is in fact finishing the process of dying. Then someone grabs him by the armpits, gives him an almighty and maddened heave, and a voice says, “Uncle Garcia!”

Jesus. It’s Christian, Christian is still here, Christian is still alive, and once more, that impossibly summons Flynn back from the brink. He flashes open his malfunctioning eyes, can see nothing but purple spots and billowing smoke, bodies down to every side, moving or not moving, he can’t be sure. He grabs Christian, trying to shelter him from whatever is about to come out of that smoke. “You,” a voice snarls. “You wretched, filthy de Clermonts, you blood traitors and backstabbing bastards – you are going to – ”

Flynn sees Rittenhouse’s silhouette, stalking toward them as inexorably as a nightmare, a masked killer in a horror movie. Then another explosion goes off, this one of considerably more human provenance, and the scorched scent of burned saltpeter fills Flynn’s nose as Rittenhouse goes flying. He lands awkwardly, and doesn’t manage to get entirely to his feet before Guy Fawkes, with an expression of vindictive triumph, lights the next barrel of gunpowder. Rittenhouse is blasted flat again, and Christian scrambles upright, screams something at the top of his lungs, and barrels at him like a runaway freight car.

Flynn’s own outcry gets stuck in his throat, as he can only see Christian and Rittenhouse grappling madly, punching each other as hard as they can. Rittenhouse is more used to magical combat than mano-a-mano bare-knuckle brawling, and for a few seconds, it almost seems like Christian is getting the upper hand on him. Then there’s a flash, a thunderous crack, and Christian falls back, collapsing like a rag doll, as Rittenhouse pulls himself free with a snarl, staggering to his feet. “Very well,” he shouts, his voice ringing across the room in eerie, crackling echoes like ravaging flames. “Have your precious little book, then. See how much good it does you, when we are matched on even ground. It is time that I returned to my realm once and for all, and we will see who the creatures wish to rule them. Goodbye, for now. Let us see if you dare to show your faces against me without tricks and traps. I am too powerful to care. The world is mine.”

With that, as someone that might be Lucy leaps in a desperate attempt to stop him, Rittenhouse raises both hands above his head, then brings them together. A door opens in the air, Flynn can see something that looks like Venice, knows that Rittenhouse is returning to the twenty-first century and they have missed their last chance to stop him before he takes over, and Lucy’s wild snatch can’t catch him. Rittenhouse vanishes in a bolt of lightning, thunder booms like the breaking of the firmament, and their burned, sooty faces are lashed in rain that feels almost soothing, sea and salt and tears.

Silence tumbles down like an avalanche, filling every corner of the wrecked solar, as fire smokes in broken beams and Flynn can see the sky above, whether or not it was supposed to be there. He remains where he is, hunched on hands and knees, not sure whether to go to Lucy or Christian first. But Lucy at least is moving, if faintly and feebly and with small whimpers of pain, and while Flynn absolutely hates to turn away from her, Christian still hasn’t stirred, and his panic is choking his throat and turning his soul to ice. Groaning at the effort, Flynn drags himself across the floor. “Come on,” he breathes, not sure what language he’s speaking – Ragusan, or French, or English, or some bastard mélange of all of the tongues he knows, all the ways in which he can possibly plead. “Christian, what did you do, you brave stupid fool, what did you – no, no. Come on. Come on.”

He reaches Christian in the next instant, gripping hold of his shoulders, lifting him and cradling him in his arms, as Christian’s head flops limply. His eyes are open but unfocused, smoke rising from the scorched wound in his chest. “Uncle Garcia?”

“Yes. Shhh. It’s me, it’s me, I’m here.” Flynn’s voice comes out in a hoarse, broken coo, soft and rough and breathless. “I have you, I have you. Don’t move. Don’t move, you’re hurt.”

Christian, of course, ignores this advice, trying to see if Rittenhouse is gone, and Flynn holds him harder, as if by his hands alone he can keep life in his body. Then Lucy appears from the smoke, reaches out with her burning-white hands, the way she must have saved Asher when he was mortally injured at Sept-Tours, and smooths them over Christian’s chest.

It – does something. It is hard to say what. It closes the wound, and stops it from getting worse, and some of the pain leaves Christian’s face. But hard as Lucy tries, she cannot quite seem to push it all the way, to finish the work. When she takes her hands away, the seal holds for a few moments, then starts to deteriorate, and she looks up at Flynn in panic. “This is – I don’t know what’s happening. Last time I could fix it, last time I – I don’t know what’s different, but it’s not working the same way it – ”

“Focus,” Flynn urges her, as if she’s not already doing that. He knows that Lucy just expended a huge amount of magic to fight Rittenhouse, to summon Corra and steal back the rest of the Ashmole pages (do they have the entire manuscript now? Was this worth it? Oh God, it has to be), but she’s _Lucy._ She can do anything, she can save all of them. She already has, at one point or another. It can’t run short now, this cannot be the terrible exception to the rule. “Come on, _moja ljubav,_ just do what you – ”

“I am.” Lucy’s voice is high and terrified. “It’s not working.”

There’s a rustle at her elbow, and Agnes, looking just as shell-shocked, kneels down next to Christian. “I know ye dinna ken me, laddie. But ye and I got on verra weel, and ye were as a grandson to me, back before ye forgot. I’ll have to try something now, I’m nae sure if it’ll work, but so be it. Lucy, d’ye have the philosopher’s stone?”

“The philosopher’s – ” Lucy jumps to her feet. She sprints off into the chaos of the solar, even as in the few moments he is away from her magic, Christian starts to fade again. Flynn’s panic is once more threatening to engulf him by the time Lucy returns with the small white stone in her palm. “Here,” she says. “But we don’t know if I did it right – and if I use it now, can we still use it for Gabriel in the future, we didn’t plan on two doses, or is that not how – ”

“Hush,” Agnes says firmly. She looks around, retrieves a goblet from the mess of the floor, and puts the stone into it, then does a small spell to fill it with wine. She swirls the stone a few times, as bits of it dissolve, and then fishes it out, setting it back into Lucy’s hand. “Here, laddie,” she says, holding the cup to Christian’s lips. “Have a drink o’ that. Careful, careful.”

Christian stares at her, as he still can’t recollect exactly how they’re supposed to know each other, but something else takes over, some old instinct or left-over memory, and he decides to trust her. He takes a sip of the wine, then another, gulps hard, and the awful dead-whiteness in his face retreats. He looks better, at least for the moment, and when Lucy cautiously gets up and moves back to see if this can be sustained without her magic, there’s no visible change. “There,” Agnes says. “That will sort him, for now.”

“For now?” Much as Flynn is abjectly relieved that total catastrophe has been miraculously avoided, this is possibly a major and ongoing problem. He remembers that small caveat about how you have to keep drinking Elixir of Life for it to work, and since their almost-but-not-perfect philosopher’s stone will dissolve a bit every time they make more, they only have a limited amount that they can brew for Christian. They have to leave enough for Gabriel, and permanently healing a double dose of manticore venom will take at least half the stone. While Gabriel himself might agree to give up his own life to save his son’s, every part of Flynn recoils from the idea. He can’t do that, he can’t trade one for another, he _can’t._ “It’s all right,” he says, as authoritatively as he can. “We can make a few doses, Lucy can rest and recharge her magic, and then she can heal him properly. It’ll be fine.”

He is very far from sure that it will be fine at all, but every successful emotional journey starts with denial, and since Christian is no longer in danger of perishing imminently, Flynn can convince himself that he won’t. Besides, there are other important matters to be attended to, and as the smoke clears – to judge by the shock of cool, wet air that smells like fish, someone has opened a window – Flynn squints around the ruins of his solar and spots Marlowe and Raleigh crouched nearby. Feeling that he would be much happier right now if he had just goddamn stayed unconscious, Flynn crawls over. “Did you get it? All of it?”

“We cannot be sure. Whatever it was the bastard dropped.” Kit wipes his bloody forehead with the back of his blistered hand, still breathing hard. “Most of it, I think, though we shall be lucky if Master Fawkes has not scorched it to – ”

Fawkes glances over indignantly, as if to say that his big bang delayed Rittenhouse at the critical instant, thank you very much, and he will not be blamed for any associated property damage. Raleigh has managed to retrieve their own Ashmole pages from the remnants of the pentacle and is stacking them together, checking them off; he seems able to make some sense of what he is looking for, so Flynn leaves him to it. Amelie and Lady Beaton are sitting against the wall, dazed and bruised but alive, and Jack seems too frightened to try to run for it, even as he too shakes his head as if there is something dancing just beyond the reach of comprehension. In a small voice he says, “My lord, are you – ”

“I’m all right.” Christian sits up with a groan, pushing his hair out of his face. “I did not realize there was such excitement going on tonight, or I would have chosen my moment more carefully. I don’t know what has gone on, or why my uncle is here when we bid farewell to him in France just two days ago, but they have saved my life, and I am grateful for it.”

With that, he stiffly inclines his head to Lucy and Agnes, who hesitate, but return it. It’s plain that Christian still has about a thousand questions, but has decided to hold off on the interrogation for the moment. He gets to his feet and collects Jack, as Lucy moves to join Flynn, Raleigh, and Kit. They stare down at the tattered pages of Ashmole 782, and can only hope that it is the full manuscript, or close enough to make no difference. The fact that Rittenhouse is now at large in the twenty-first century, that he feels confident enough even without it to launch his grand return, cannot fail to be extremely concerning. They need to finish things here and get back to stop him as soon as possible, and Flynn will also have to see about repairing the damage to the Old Lodge, since he can’t just peace out of town with the roof blown off and the evidence of forbidden sorcery everywhere. He is sick and shaken, terrified at how close the evening came to total disaster, and he feels some ancestral impulse to get off his ass and look like he’s managing the situation. “We’ll discuss hiding the manuscript first thing tomorrow morning. Let’s try to clean up this first.”

Everyone levers painfully upright and does their best to pitch in, carrying off splintered timbers and sweeping up soot and broken glass; they’re lucky the house is still standing. The pentacle is scorched into the floorboards and won’t come out, so Flynn throws a carpet over it, as if that will be enough for disguise. They keep jumping at small sounds and looking around in case Rittenhouse has suddenly returned, and it is very late by the time the mess has been dealt with. There are still gaping holes in the roof, smashed panes in the windows, deep charred holes in the floor, and everyone is wavering with exhaustion. Rather than pack them off on the midnight streets of London, and since they will need them again tomorrow morning, Flynn sends them off to find somewhere to sleep in the house, then beckons to Lucy. “You go up to bed, _moja ljubav,”_ he says, low-voiced. “I need to talk to Christian.”

Lucy glances between them in concern, but nods, kisses him quickly, and withdraws. Agnes has taken firm charge of Jack, who may not remember her but decides not to quibble with this grandmother who knows what she’s doing, and that leaves Flynn and Christian alone in the smashed-up solar, slants of moonlight shining through the broken timbers. There are a few beats of silence. Then Christian says, “What in hellfire just happened?”

“I – I don’t know how to explain.” Flynn owes some kind of _something_ , but he isn’t a natural liar. His instinct is always to tell the truth, no matter blunt or inconvenient or unwelcome. “But in short, you just attacked the most powerful supernatural creature that has ever existed, almost died because of it, and it may be – complicated.”

“I’ll be fine, Uncle Garcia.” Christian is still somewhat unsteady on his feet, but his face is pale and set, and he doesn’t sound like a child trying to wheedle his way out of trouble with a parent. He sounds like a fellow soldier coolly informing a compatriot that he can carry on and fully intends to do – making a decision, not asking for permission. “The witches. They saved me. I don’t know why, or what you’re doing here, or any of this, but… still.”

“They did.” Flynn continues to stare at the floor, but this feels cheap, and he wrenches his gaze up to Christian’s. “Lucy is going to recharge her magic, then she’ll heal you properly and send you back to Sept-Tours, where you bloody should have stayed. I’ll tend to Jack, I’ll find a place for him, if you – if you did not want him to return, but he – well. The two of you, beforehand. You took him in, you cared for him. Neither of you remember that now, and that’s our fault, but so it is.”

Christian glances at him again. Flynn keeps saying things that no sane person should say, and they will either have to wipe Christian’s memory again, which seems excessive, or explain everything and just trust him not to tell the rest of the family. That feels equally unfair, but the fact that he is here in London has not left them with a multitude of options. Besides, they have had to do many things they find distasteful in the name of a greater good, even as Flynn wonders how far that goes, how much they have to keep justifying in service of what is, after all, an awful future for the de Clermonts. He doesn’t want to keep hurting his family, he doesn’t want to keep turning his back on them, and especially not after the scare he just had. But what he says instead is, “Go to bed. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

Christian pauses, then nods and shows himself out, and Flynn stands there, watching him go. He feels as if all his strength has run out, and he finally catalyzes himself back into motion, stumbling up the stairs to the master bedchamber. When he opens the door, Lucy sits up in a flash, the quilts falling from her shoulders. “Is Christian all right?”

“I don’t know.” Flynn pulls his tunic over his head, unlaces his breeches, shrugs on his nightshirt, and crawls in next to her. She nestles into his chest, he settles his chin in its accustomed place on her head, and he can feel the fine tremor running through her. He rubs his hands up and down her arms, as if to warm her up. “I think so, for now. And once you recharge your magic, you’ll heal him like you did for Papa, so that should be – ”

“I don’t…” Lucy hesitates. “I don’t know if it was a question of me not having enough magic. I used a lot during the fight, but it wasn’t that. I did whatever I did before, but it wasn’t enough this time, and I don’t know what was different. Did I make a mistake with the spell? Did he remember, is that why he came here and decided to – ”

“No.” Flynn looks down at her pale, worried face, cups her head in his hands, and strokes her cheekbones with his thumbs, leaning down to kiss her firmly on the mouth. When he pulls back, he repeats, “No. It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t make a mistake. He didn’t remember. He just… came here anyway, whether to return Jack or because he wanted to get away from the others and didn’t even know why he felt guilty. Perhaps we should have thought of that possibility, but we didn’t, and now we….well. We’ll figure it out.”

Lucy doesn’t answer, but he can feel her wanting to believe it, as if by sheer volition alone she can make it true. Her fingers curl around the neck of his nightshirt, pulling him close, and Flynn shifts his position, settling down on the mattress and letting her cling to him like a koala. He wonders if he can even bear to suggest what he thought of earlier: if they used the _whole_ philosopher’s stone, they could properly heal Christian’s injury, no matter what it is. Rittenhouse inflicted it, and also bit him, so perhaps it’s a different kind of poison, another rare toxin without an easily available antidote. But the obvious trade-off is that if they do this, there’s no stone for Gabriel. They don’t have time to make another one, and they certainly don’t have a spare _calculus albus_ lying around, after Asher gave it to them the first time. They already learned back in the present that Lucy’s magic alone can’t heal him, and just assuming that now it can, that it’s powerful enough post-alchemical wedding, feels ludicrously flimsy. But how can Flynn choose between Christian and Gabriel? How can he save one at the direct expense of the other? He can’t. He _can’t._

Maybe, Flynn thinks with desperate hopefulness, he won’t have to. Maybe a few drops will in fact tide Christian over, Lucy can try again, and the wound won’t get worse. Or maybe they can risk a larger dose, so long as there’s plenty of the stone left. They’re going to have to figure it out fast. As soon as they hide Ashmole 782, they need to return to the present, and they can’t leave Christian in some situation where he’s dependent on Lucy’s magic or doses of Elixir or anything else he can’t get once they’re gone. This is already going to be finicky enough with the timeline and everyone’s memories. Christ, _what_ do they do?

Flynn still has no answers, keeps staring at the curtains, and finally blinks and discovers to his groggy surprise that the light in the room is grey, it’s morning, and he must have slept. Lucy is asleep in his arms, but she’s stirring, as is he, at the sound of muffled pounding on the bedroom door. He sits up warily, pushing her behind him. “Who’s there?”

“Lord Clairmont.” He recognizes the voice from somewhere, but can’t place it. “Open this door at once, by order of the Queen’s Majesty.”

Fuck. The knowledge clicks into place: that’s the captain of Elizabeth’s guard, and whatever reason he has for being in their house very early in the morning, after large-scale, damaging, dangerous, and seriously illegal magic was performed here last night, cannot possibly be good. Flynn indicates to Lucy that she should stay in bed, and gets up, striding across the floor in his bare feet. He pulls the door open. “You’ve woken us early, goodman.”

The captain stares at him, cool and unimpressed. In the corridor behind him, Flynn can see half a dozen more soldiers, as well as Robert Parry, who must have tried in vain to deter them from entrance. He throws an apologetic look at Flynn, who shakes his head; if they have to pay the piper, it won’t be the steward’s fault. He glances around for Christian, Marlowe, Fawkes, Agnes, Amelie, Lady Beaton, Raleigh, or any of the other individuals complicit in treason that he is presently sheltering under his roof. Of all of them, Marlowe and Raleigh might have enough personal and political cachet with the queen to escape relatively unscathed, but everyone else would be in line for some variant of chopping block, metaphorically or literally. At any rate, Flynn doesn’t see them. The party must in fact be here for him, and he puts on his best jaunty smile. “What seems to be amiss, gentlemen?”

“Thou knowest damn well what is amiss.” The guard apparently feels that he’s not going to waste formality of address or proper deference to a social superior on a suspected traitor, and his face flushes. “The Queen’s Majesty warned many months ago that thou hadst no leeway for repeated error, my _lord._ You will be coming to Whitehall with us.”

Fuck, the second. Flynn recalls telling Lucy, the first time Elizabeth’s summons arrived, that if she really meant to arrest them, she would not have invited to an audience them first; she would just send soldiers to remove them. That appears to be exactly what is happening now. Lucy, looking aghast, is getting out of bed with an apparent mind to intervene, and the captain cuts his eyes sharply to her. “Was Lady Clairmont privy to this treason too?”

“No,” Flynn says hastily, throwing his arm out and shaking his head at Lucy. Even if he’s arrested, they need to keep her at liberty. “No, my wife – she knows nothing of this, truly. I am an innocent man, I need fear not my sovereign lady’s wrath, but if it will set her mind at ease to hear so, I am happy to visit Whitehall.”

“Garcia,” Lucy says under her breath. “Garcia, don’t – ”

“It’ll be fine.” Flynn says it as stoutly as he can, just as he did last night, even as she looks up at him with an even more terrified expression. He does his best to smile reassuringly, then turns back to the guards. “Surely we can sort this out in civilized fashion? No need for fuss.”

“You tell us, my lord.” The captain eyes him up and down. “You may have a moment to dress. But if we hear any sound of you trying to open a window and escape, or any other sort of underhanded trickery, we shall set fire to the entire house.”

Flynn flinches. He withdraws, shuts the door, and gets quickly into his breeches, shirt, hose, and shoes, watched by Lucy. “You can’t,” she says. “Garcia, what if they – ”

“It’s going to be all right.” Flynn cups her face in his hands, bends down to kiss her. “As soon as I’m – well, if I don’t come back for a while, just make sure that you and the others hide the manuscript. All right?”

“All right.” Lucy bites her lip. If nothing else, she managed those six weeks without him, crafted the philosopher’s stone alone, and she is the one who has done the most, single-handed, on this journey to the past. If necessary, she will manage again, even as they both feel it like a bitter blow. “But you have to come back to me.”

“I will.” He kisses her again, then at the sound of renewed pounding on the door, decides that the guards think he has had enough time for toilette and should get on with being decently arrested. “Soon. Soon, _moja ljubav._ All right?”

With that, not quite trusting himself to look back at her again, Flynn crosses the floor, steps out, and presents himself for inspection. The captain beckons, and one of the guards chains his wrists. At the touch of the cuffs, Flynn barely restrains from a hiss. These aren’t the usual irons for a prisoner, but a special set made from silver. These were made for a vampire.

The guards march Flynn along the hall, down the stairs, and out into the courtyard, emerging into the cool, damp morning. The damage to the Old Lodge is visible, the walls and roof by the solar singed and scorched, and heads appear in nearby windows as Flynn is escorted out to the barred wagon that waits in the muddy lane, the horses snorting and stamping. Clearly they want to see that _someone_ was punished for the spectacle of last night, and he wonders if one of them might have gone to turn him in. He was always careful to cultivate a good relationship with his neighbors, partly for this exact reason.  He attended their social gatherings and sent his congratulations on weddings or christenings, made sure to step into a church where they could see, eaten their feasts (sugar and all) precisely to prove that they had nothing to fear from him. He doesn’t think they have ever suspected his true identity, but you don’t need to know that your neighbor was a vampire if he nearly blew up half the city last night. You’d call the police anyway.

Flynn is not left at leisure to ponder this question, as he is shoved into the wagon, the hatch slams behind him, and he remains in murky half-darkness for the slow, bumping ride to Whitehall. If they are intending to do anything drastic, he’ll have to fight them, and assaulting her guards is not a solid plan to convince Elizabeth of his innocence. He always knew that she liked him, but that her favor was not secured, especially after he pissed her off by turning up randomly married to Lucy in the first place. His mind is racing, and while Lucy is the one usually not fond of small spaces, he feels a touch of claustrophobia himself. Keep playing along for now, resist only if they try to take him to the Tower? Or….?

At last, the wagon bumps to a halt, and Flynn supposes that since they _are_ in Whitehall and not the Tower, he is presumably going to be allowed at least _some_ chance to explain himself before they proceed directly to indefinite imprisonment. Then the door opens, and he is greeted with the business end of half a dozen spears, all likewise tipped in silver. It makes him flinch. He is a valued spy for Elizabeth, a hero of the Armada with a personally granted knighthood (she gives those out very sparingly) and here he is being treated like a dangerous monster, like Rittenhouse himself. They have no real reason to think otherwise, he reminds himself. They know nothing, not now. But it still burns.

Flynn is hauled out of the wagon none too gently, and just manages to avoid falling on his face in the mud. A drizzling rain has started to fall, wetting his hair and shirt with speckling droplets, as he is prodded across the courtyard and under the shadow of the stone eaves, into the echoing, torchlit corridor beyond. This is not the way to the queen’s presence chamber, for certain, and he tries to keep his gaze forward. They come to a halt at the end, the captain removes a ring of keys from his belt and undoes a heavy, iron-studded door, opens it, and shoves Flynn pointedly in the back. “In there.”

“Have you informed Her Majesty that I am here?” Flynn does not move. “If I have offended her, surely I have some right to an audience, rather than to merely welter in the rot.”

“Her Majesty will see you when she deems fit, traitor.” They’re past any sham courtesy of _my lord._ That isn’t a good sign, not that any of this was. “In.”

Flynn hesitates, then steps across the threshold with as much cool dignity as he can. His new lodgings are a dank stone cell, one slit high in the wall that is heavily barred and much too small to be of any use even if it wasn’t. He is left in his chains; clearly they are going to take no risk of escape attempts, and the door slams with an ominous, weighty clank. He can possibly get through it if he has to, but these damn silver cuffs are a serious problem. He’s old and strong enough that they can’t fully incapacitate him, but if he makes any attempt to break down that door, it’ll cause enough fuss that they’ll be down here in a hurry with a lot more of it. Against _that_ much, he’s fucked.

Flynn blows out an angry breath, swears, and stalks around every inch of the cell, trying to judge how long they’re going to keep him down here to stew in his presumable remorse. It is the inaction more than anything that makes him seethe. At least if he was allowed to see Elizabeth, he could start smoothing this over, make amends, do whatever was necessary to obtain his release and be on his way back to Lucy. If he’s just going to be stuck in here pointlessly, doing nothing, wasting time, that might drive him mad faster than anything.

After three circuits of the damnable place have revealed no easily exploitable weaknesses, Flynn has to sit down and focus hard before he slips into a blood fury. He hasn’t been in one for ages, and he doesn’t want to go back to it. He _can’t,_ and his entire life may depend on it. If someone comes down here and finds him in that state, he could attack and dismember them, whether or not he meant to, and then his fate as a monster would be sealed. He’s still the man Elizabeth knew and trusted. But he did just organize a ritual to call down supreme evil, even if for a greater strategic purpose, knowing full well how many different ways it was against the law. How does he argue his way around _that?_

Some time passes, in distant, dripping stasis. Flynn loses track of how much. Then there’s a rattling at the door, he looks up sharply, and bounds to his feet. If it’s the guards come to take him for his reckoning with the queen – well, as noted, he would prefer that. But as the door opens and a sliver of strangled torchlight falls through, the figure that steps through, tall and severe and emaciated in its black cassock, is not one of the guards. It’s Father Hubbard.

“You.” Flynn doesn’t know if he is surprised or not, but something in his gut starts to think that this is making an ultimate, awful sense. He almost doesn’t need to ask, but he does anyway. “What the hell are you doing here? Wanted to admire your handiwork?”

The other vampire does not answer, surveying Flynn up and down. Even with the cuffs, he doesn’t seem interested in any too-close approach, and his thin lips purse. Then he says, “Lord Clairmont. What an unfortunate condition in which to find you.”

“Shut up.” Flynn takes a step, and Hubbard hisses, baring his fangs. “You arranged this, didn’t you? Rittenhouse used to nest at your hive, I haven’t forgotten. So if you heard about last night and decided to turn us in for some sort of plan to help him – ”

“I told you long ago that I wanted that foul creature gone as much as you.” Hubbard doesn’t retract his fangs, and they gleam yellow in the dim light of the dungeon. “You need not sully your already tarnished name with these baseless accusations. As for your presence here, I acted only in my capacity as a loyal Englishman – which you have either long forgotten or never valued – in informing the queen of your outrageous activities last night. You are a traitor twice or thrice over, a vampire, a Catholic, a Frenchman, and I finally have absolute proof that you are plotting against the safety and stability of Her Majesty’s realm, consorting with demons and sodomites and playwrights. Kit Marlowe is all three at once, one may remark. Who else have you nurtured in your foul bosom, you – ”

“You have a _lot –_ ” Flynn’s vision goes red, and he shakes his head. “A _lot_ of fucking bloody nerve, Hubbard. I know you’ve never liked me or any of the de Clermonts, but you have no idea what you’re interfering with. And what, Elizabeth thinks you’re pure as the driven snow? Knows I’m a vampire, but that you just happened to learn this without any – ”

“Her Majesty is aware of my status.” Hubbard’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. “She subjected me to most stringent tests of my loyalty. Ordered me shut into those same cuffs, and other sorts of silver. I welcomed the flagellation, the scourging of body and soul, the holy fire of the pain. I am made stronger for both the queen and Almighty God alike, a vessel to cleanse earthly and heavenly realms of the impurity of the imperfect. It is time.”

“Elizabeth doesn’t much care for religious zealots.” Flynn leans against the wall and tries to speak casually. “Of any persuasion. So if you think she’ll give you her blessing and a banner to lead some new anti-creature crusade, you – ”

“The creatures are my brethren.” Hubbard makes an impatient noise. “I would not seek to recklessly exterminate our valuable and precious blood, our extraordinary gifts. But I also agree that we have run unchecked for too long, multiplying in dark places like vermin, underneath the nose of the government and to the detriment of the greater good. Her Majesty has been made aware of the scale of the problem, and I feel confident that she will support extraordinary measures, so long as they can deliver an admirable result. You and your kind can help me, Garcia. Not that I suspect you will. On that note, you owe me a son. Your sweet brother killed my Peter, last November. I know he did.”

“What?” Flynn doesn’t know what exactly this is in relation to, but it doesn’t matter. Trust Gabriel’s bad decisions to fuck them over one more time, he thinks in exhausted exasperation. “Yes, well, Gabriel has recently been singularly occupied in idiocy, but – ”

“Last year. All Souls 1589.” Hubbard is watching him with glittering eyes. “Your brother Gabriel, and the demon Marlowe, killed a man named Henry de Prestyn and an entire cohort of creatures with him. Then to disguise their crime, they murdered my innocent Peter, when he stumbled upon them. I suspected that the de Clermonts had something to do with his death, but only recently have I been able to confirm it. And as a result – ”

“You acquired Henry de Prestyn’s body and sold it to Dr. John Dee.” Flynn is aware of that part of the story. “Yes, I know. But what is this ridiculous fable you’re trying to – you want me to believe that Gabriel and Kit massacred a lot of random passersby for no reason? Come on, I know you hate us, but do better than that – ”

“It’s not a lie.” Hubbard lifts his chin and stares dead into Flynn’s face. “Why don’t you ask your beloved brother why he would commit such treason, and then keep it from you? By rights, both of you should be in this dungeon right now, and if I had any way to reach him in France, you can be more than bloody sure that I would do it. But I have arranged for that eventuality as well. The instant Gabriel de Clermont sets foot on English soil again, he will be arrested, brought up on charges, and made to pay the price for his outrages. As I hear it, there will be plenty of husbands in London eager to swing the headsman’s ax themselves, and avenge the arrant dishonor he has wreaked upon their wives, to name the least of his carnal crimes. Alas, that satisfaction will not be theirs, though they are welcome to lob stones and rotten vegetables at him when he is shut in the stocks. Your brother is a degenerate, a monster, and a murderer, my _lord,_ and I intend personally to see him burn.”

Flynn opens his mouth, then shuts it. He feels punched, thrown out a window, unable to keep up or fire back properly. He – yes, he too has been very angry with Gabriel, he was just thinking that Gabriel’s bad decisions are once more coming back to bite them, but whatever Hubbard is hinting at, whatever he thinks Gabriel has done, is something much worse. Flynn still wants to insist that it’s a lie, but something in him is no longer quite sure. Gabriel _was_ so cagey about Henry de Prestyn’s death. Flynn has defended him time and time again, even when Gabriel barely seemed to merit it. Yet he is forced to admit that Hubbard’s accusations aren’t entirely groundless. Yes, Gabriel has killed people, and yes, he has bedded most of London, and kept secrets, and done whatever that nonsense at Sept-Tours was, but –

Lucy. Does Lucy know? Did Gabriel tell her at some point? Not that Flynn can think why he would, since this Gabriel has regarded Lucy generally as barely one step above an insect, but they had moments of cooperation and even something resembling friendship, here and there. Besides, they have had long stretches without Flynn, not least those six weeks at Sept-Tours, and whatever might have happened in the fallout from Prague. Flynn doesn’t want to think that there could be this entire dimension of which he is completely unaware, but by his continued failure to answer these accusations, Hubbard must see that he has struck a nerve. At last he says, “So do you dispute me, Lord Clairmont?”

“You certainly think you’ve done something.” Flynn answers as neutrally as he can, even as the redness is once more stealing up, and he blinks it back. Yet it remains, lurking like a poisonous crimson cloud, eager to answer this in blood, not words. “If you have more that you just have to gloat about, feel free. Otherwise, get out of here before I kill you.”

Hubbard smiles, as if by this threat alone, Flynn has proven his point, and turns on his heel. “A son,” he repeats. “You owe me one. The orphan boy, the one that you and your household took in – what was his name, Jack? I would regard him as suitable recompense.”

“Jack’s a child, you son of a bitch.” Turning a five-year-old into a vampire, to live for eternity in the body of a little boy, would be a truly titanic sin, not that Hubbard seems to be terribly concerned with those right now. “If you – ”

“I would not turn him until he had reached adulthood.” Hubbard folds his arms. “He would be sent to my hive, to live among us and learn our ways, and then when he had become a man, receive the gift of eternal life. Perhaps it is the least you owe him as well, considering what you have doubtless inflicted upon him. I can take much more, you know. Ask for anything. You should agree to let me have Jack and thank me for my mercy.”

Flynn grinds his teeth. Hubbard is right, damn him, at least on the point where he could crush the de Clermonts to dust and seems intent on doing that for Gabriel particularly. But Flynn was just thinking about this, wondering in despair how much violation and violence they need to tacitly permit or actively commit in the service of their own greater good, the cause that Hubbard himself just invoked. Hubbard’s is horrible, clearly, but Flynn doesn’t know if his isn’t. His family, friends, and loved ones have constantly borne the brunt of this war, and Lucy’s father said that hiding Ashmole 782 now and retrieving it in the present is the only way to defeat Rittenhouse, but Jesus. This is too much. This is too hard.

Hubbard is still waiting for an answer. Knowing he has the upper hand, but preferring to let Flynn realize it rather than utter it aloud. He raises an eyebrow.

“Fine,” Flynn growls, hating himself, wanting to tear his tongue out. “You can have Jack.”

“Thank you.” Hubbard inclines his head, a small, triumphant smile playing on his mouth. “It is, after all, what I expected you to say. Good day, my lord.”

With that, he sweeps out, just as Flynn lunges at him in some wild thought of strangling him with his chains, and slams the door. The bolts slam in like hammers, and Flynn slumps against the wood, as the fury begs to be given into. It was that way with his mother, for the longest time after Papa’s death, even as it was with him after Lorena and Iris. Tear the world apart, make it pay. It might not put it back together, but it helped. If Maria was here, she would doubtless counsel that sort of red ruin, that merciless savaging, but what good is that going to do him? Flynn is locked down here like a rat in a trap while time runs out, he doesn’t know how to properly heal Christian, he has never known the full truth about Gabriel or perhaps even Lucy, and he just consigned an innocent child to pay the price for Hubbard’s vengeance against the de Clermonts. He has possibly felt worse, but it isn’t coming to mind.

He slides down the door and sits in a huddled heap in the dirty straw. Half-formed thoughts and impossible plans whirl in his head, never taking coherent shape or lasting long enough to turn into anything more substantial. More time passes. There isn’t much light from the overhead slit, so he can’t use it to tell day or night. It is at the edge of his awareness that at some point, he will need to feed. He took heartsblood from Lucy when he first woke up, and a brief bite when they were making love, but he was just recovering from six weeks without, he’s still wounded, he did himself no favors during the Rittenhouse robbery attempt, and he can’t hold out forever down here, shut up and starved like a fungus in the dark. Even if he manages to avoid giving into the fury, the hunger could get him.

It’s all right, Flynn tells himself. Someone on the outside has to be working on this right now, someone is doing more than he is. Someone will rescue him. He will get out of here before it becomes a paramount problem, and if worse comes to worse, he will bite his arm, try to satiate himself with his own blood. It won’t be much and it won’t taste good, but it’s better than starving. He has to think logically, has to plan out possible steps and increasingly more drastic degrees of last resort. He doesn’t want to, but that is the reality of it.

More time passes. He lies down on the cold, damp stone, stares at the ceiling, and thinks of stars. He remembers the first time he saw the sun again, after he was turned. Newborn vampires can’t go out in it, it takes several decades to get strong enough, and the first emergence was a revelation, something he had almost forgotten about. It stung and prickled, it was sharp as glass on his skin, but it was there and the world was possible and everything was made new, he was alive, he was _alive._ It seems unforgivable, from this distance, that he immediately chose to use that second chance to murder everyone he could. He had to make them pay the price for Lorena and Iris’s death, he had to. Yet the bandits who murdered them were humans, and by then, the only ones who were still alive were old men. He killed those old men before their screaming wives, and killed their families and their sons and their grandsons, everyone who shared in the shame of that kinship. He had killed some of the direct culprits earlier, at night, stealing through their windows and draining them viciously dry. He doesn’t even know how many, or if they had anything to do with Lorena and Iris. If Gabriel is in fact responsible for a massacre, Flynn isn’t sure he has any right to judge him for it. There is just as much blood on his hands. _We are all monsters._

He lies there, sick with guilt and shame and regret, unable to slip off into the comforting ease of oblivion. Still more time passes, edged with the awareness of hunger that can no longer be entirely pushed down. Then at last, again, the door rattles.

Flynn sits up sharply, fast enough to make his head reel, and scrambles to his feet. If it’s Hubbard again, he does not want to be caught in this state, to show how badly he was affected, but as it swings open, he sees the guard from earlier, the one who arrested him. “Lord Clairmont,” he says – clipped, icy, but at least not _traitor._ “Come with me.”

Flynn is more than happy to do so, even if he is irresistibly aware of the captain’s jugular vein, its tempting nearness, and how very easy it would be to tear it out. He walks out as carefully as he can, too tight with self-control, blinking at the presence of the torch. “How long have I been down here?”

The captain considers, then apparently decides that he can answer that. “On the order of ten days. Her Majesty has agreed to receive you. I suggest you make use of it.”

Ten days. It’s not quite as bad as Flynn feared, but that is not an insubstantial amount of time. That means it’s definitely October by now, All Souls rushing up even faster, and Lucy must be frantic with worry. “Has anyone sent word to my wife?”

“Lady Clairmont has repeatedly called upon the palace, suing for an audience, but Her Majesty has not received her. I believe it was made plain that if she continued to do so, she would be judged a traitor herself, and subject to the same confinement. You are fortunate to have a wife with such interest in your welfare, are you not?”

Flynn doesn’t answer. Yes, of course he is, of course Lucy has begged until she could beg no more, but he is bereft of all critical faculties or higher reason right now, and all he feels is a dull resentment that she didn’t tell him about Gabriel and Henry de Prestyn and whatever that mess was. Perhaps that was the exact reason she didn’t, especially after he made his opinion on further interferences from Gabriel very clear, but still. He follows the captain through the warren of passages, down a back corridor, and into a small sitting room. Clearly, whatever Elizabeth has to say to him, she wants no witnesses, to clamp down on the dread secret of supernaturals in their midst as much as one can. He is not unchained, but he is allowed to sit. The captain says that he will inform Her Majesty that he is here, and withdraws.

Flynn sits there staring at his hands, trying to force down the hunger enough to remain rational, and wandering off into space again. At last, there is a click of a key in the door, he looks around, and leaps to his feet – too fast, too high, not a jump that a mortal man would make, an utterly inopportune reminder of his monstrous nature. “Your Majesty.”

“Sir Garcia.” Elizabeth has stopped in her tracks at his reaction, but sets her jaw and proceeds into the room, nodding at her guards to leave them. They look leery about letting the queen be alone in a room with _that,_ but do as bid. She looks him up and down, eyes cool and unrevealing. “I surely hath seen thee in sprightlier estate.”

“I have no doubt, Your Majesty.” Flynn can hear her heartbeat: tripping more or less steadily, but still faster than usual. She’s nervous, she’s doing her best not to look like it, and to his starved, deprived, betrayed brain, that activates the predator parts of him, the ones that want to make her run like a deer and take her down. He clenches his fists harder, breathing in shallow gulps, none of which actually do much. “I have been – waiting your pleasure somewhat longer than usual.”

Elizabeth acknowledges that with a curt nod. If he looks different from how she has seen him before, so too does she look different to him. He was expecting full pomp and circumstance, the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, the ruff and the jewels and the crown and the scepter and orb of state, all the accoutrements and regalia of her mighty rank, but her hair is down, she wears only light powder and rouge, and her dress is plain and unadorned. She wears her signet ring on her finger, but that is the only outward symbol of her status. She is not coming to him as the head of state, Flynn realizes, but as a person, as an old and lonely woman who trusted him and might trust him still, no matter Hubbard’s venomous insinuations. She does not look particularly pleased to see that he has suffered, at least. At last she says, “I did not know thy confinement was quite so rough, I vow. But thou hast sorely betrayed me, my lord, and I did not think to see it from such as thee. I forgave thee once before. Was that in err?”

“I – no, Your Majesty.” Flynn hopes she will let him sit again; his legs would be steadier that way, and it might take the edge off the hunting urge. “I did not mean to betray you. But if you truly know what I am, then you know that I am fighting enemies far beyond the usual.”

Elizabeth considers that. She pours a cup of wine, as if to have something to occupy her hands, and takes a sip. Then she says, “Yes, I know what thou art. A blood-sucker, a night-stalker, the creature that is called the _vampyre_. You always seemed so human to me, my lord. I should not have thought. Is that all artifice?”

“No.” To hell with her permission. Flynn sits down anyway, and while her nostrils flare, she does not rebuke him for it. “You know me as I have always been. I have not lied to you except in omission, for you never wanted to know that creatures such as myself existed in your realm. If you did, you would have been obliged to punish us.”

“I have spent two-and-thirty years on the throne, my lord.” Elizabeth pauses, then moves to sit across from him. “A woman, and a woman unmarried, a woman made bastard by her own father, a woman whose mother was called a witch and beheaded for adultery, beset by treachery and deceit and hatred from every side, for everything that I was. I took a vow at my coronation to defend England from all enemies, and by the wrath of God, I have done no less. I have defied the Spanish Armada and the Pope of Christendom alike, have survived countless assassination attempts, my name besmirched across Europe by the powerful men who cannot abide that I should rule, and I should outwit and outlive them. So tell me, would I be wrong, or overreaching in my authority, to see you and your kind as a dangerous menace, and do whatever it was that I must?”

Flynn registers dimly that she’s dropped the “thee” and “thou,” that she is speaking to him as an equal, and lifts his chin to look back at her. She stares at him levelly; her heartbeat is still slightly faster than normal, but it is slowing. She is finding her feet in this confrontation, she is no longer afraid of him, and that cuts through some of the hazy, hungry murk. “No,” he says. “No, you are not. We are dangerous, and only a fool would pretend otherwise. We are monsters, and only another sort of monster would say we were not. But this would avail you nothing, Your Majesty, if you tried to mount a campaign to persecute us. You already refused to make windows into the souls of your Catholic subjects, and you know full well that they exist in England as much as we do. You could have rooted them out with spectacular trials and public burnings, but you did not want to do as Edward did to the Catholics or Mary to the Protestants. If Hubbard has asked you for similar license to do so to the creatures, for the sake of his own selfish power, I need not be so presumptuous as to counsel you to decline. It is not in your nature, and never was. And all this time that we have lived among you, have we risen up to take your throne, if that is what you fear? To slaughter innocent English subjects in their beds, and rule in blood and terror? People always fear and hate what they do not know. Your people do the same. But we are not your enemy, Elizabeth.”

The queen jerks slightly at the use of her Christian name. She seems unable to decide whether to reprimand him for the liberty, and looks away, her knuckles going white on her goblet. She takes a drink of wine, as if to buy time to gather her thoughts. Then she says, “Father Hubbard claims that you and yours have done him a great many unpardonable offenses, aye. Do you deny that charge, my lord?”

“No.” Flynn leans back. “Hubbard is a vile man, but he has grounds in saying that we have wronged him. But if you listen to him, if you let him pursue his grievances with the might of the English state, you will bring about exactly what you hoped to avoid. A war between creatures, with humans caught in the middle, and God knows what sort of fanatics flocking to England in hopes of defeating the supernatural evil. For all that he is a vampire, Hubbard is more like them than he is like the rest of us. He would turn on all of us the instant it profited him – he has done exactly that already – and he would do the same to you.”

Elizabeth takes that in. It’s clear that she is more than shrewd enough to have formed this assessment of Hubbard’s character on her own, and that her deepest instinct is still to listen to Flynn, her once-loyal spy and advisor, who has protected her from many other threats seen and unseen. “He most sorely wants your brother Gabriel executed. You will know my own displeasure with the lord de Clermont, as I made it most clear. Do you have a word to say in his defense, or any reason why I should not permit it?”

“I…” Flynn opens his mouth again, isn’t sure what to say, and shuts it. At last he says, “I have nothing to offer, Your Majesty, no. I cannot say that his actions have not been the most deserving of condemnation, because they have. But I love him more than almost anything in this world, and if you give the order to kill him, I must put all my effort into thwarting it.”

Elizabeth raises one plucked eyebrow. He thinks she might be impressed, despite herself. After all, she values loyalty and devotion, and the fact that he has owned up to everything she has asked of him. Finally she says, “To be sure, I wish no more blood needlessly spilled on anyone’s account, and I know enough of your family to think that if I was to execute their eldest son, I would come to regret it. Very well, I will see to it that the order is rescinded. Is there anything else you would plead from me?”

“Since you ask, Your Majesty.” Flynn clasps his hands on his knees. “Yes. You must set me free, reunite me with my wife, and allow me to finish the purpose on which I came here.”

“Your wife.” Elizabeth has clearly been seeing a lot of Lucy recently, or at least heard that she was in the palace, but not granted her an audience. “She is one of these creatures too, is she not? A different breed from you.”

“Yes.” Flynn isn’t outright going to call her a witch, since Elizabeth might be obliged to do something about that either way, but still. “What we have done, what we have done since we came here, what we were doing on the night that Hubbard had us arrested, all of it has been to rid your realm, and the world in general, from the greatest evil that our kind has ever known. If you want that work finished, if you want us to help you defend England, let me go.”

Elizabeth takes another sip of wine. They gaze at each other without flinching. Then she says, “I enjoyed my time with Lady Clairmont, when she called upon me in the summer. We read books together, and played cards, and she was a diverting companion. But then to find that she was calling in secret upon Lady Mary Beaton, my cousin’s old – ”

“With respect, Your Majesty.” Flynn keeps his tone level. “This is far greater than that. It is nothing to do with old Stuart plots, or the Scots and English, or anything else you might be inclined to fear. Lady Beaton helped us the other night, and has been a great help to Lucy in learning what she had to do here. And once we leave, that association will reach its natural end. So if that is all, then – ”

Elizabeth considers him with a faint smile, as if she can tell that he is clearly trying to hurry her along to pardoning him, and he should shut his mouth and wait for the queen to take her time. For several moments more, she says nothing. Then she rises to her feet. “So be it. Lord Garcia Clairmont, you and your wife have our official forgiveness and mercy. I should not have thought that I was obliged to grant it a second time, but it seems indeed that you are an extraordinary case. You shall be set at liberty and allowed to return to your home at once, but I expect you gone from London by the feast of All Souls.”

“That is exactly what we intend to do, Your Majesty.” Flynn half-laughs, despite himself. “And I hope that my other – well, that I won’t come back for a few years, give things time to cool down. I – well. Thank you.” He pauses. “Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth inclines her head. “You have never failed to be interesting, Garcia,” she says. “I suspect wherever you are bound next, it shall continue to be so. I wish you well of it.”

Flynn tries to answer, finds himself unexpectedly choked up, and doesn’t. He bows and kisses her hand when she offers it – then, when she hesitates, her powdered cheek. He senses something fragile, perhaps tears, but she is too much the queen to reveal it. She steps back, and indicates regally that it is time for him to go now, and so, he does.

To say the least, the Old Lodge is thrown into a furor at the sudden return of its formerly-imprisoned master – head-to-toe filthy, having just walked home from Whitehall with the look of a lunatic in a sandwich board, attracting so many stares that there’s a traffic jam on the Strand, and bursting through the gates just in time to give the youngest groom a heart attack. Then there are several more minutes of furor that end with Lucy sprinting out of the house and hitting Flynn hard enough to make him stagger, as he catches her (she does not seem to notice his dungeon reek, or maybe she just doesn’t care), kisses her, and decides that the explanations can wait. “Oh my God,” she says breathlessly, arms around his neck. “Garcia, I thought – I’ve been trying to get you out, but they wouldn’t let me see Elizabeth, I didn’t – I was so – how are you here?”

“Later.” Flynn kisses her again and puts her down, though she remains tangentially attached to him as they go inside. “How’s Christian?”

“He’s fine. I think. He’s out right now, in fact. He was trying something else to get you out of prison, I hope it wasn’t – well, he took Kit with him, I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but… well. And someone came here a few days ago, they took Jack, we tried to keep him, but we had no choice if we didn’t want – ”

Flynn thinks that it would be an extremely ironic cosmic joke if Christian was to get arrested for sneaking into Whitehall in an attempt to jailbreak him, on the very day Elizabeth released him. At least he didn’t take Fawkes, or the plan would very definitely be of an explosive nature, but Kit, the royal spy, is also poised to offer useful secrets to speed the process. As for Jack, that is its own barrel of worms, and the guilt writhes in Flynn’s gut. “I had to agree to let Jack go,” he says tersely. “We’ll – we’ll figure that out later.”

Lucy glances at him, but decides that she doesn’t want to press for details. Instead she says, “Agnes wasn’t happy. She and I sent Amelie home, and then Agnes decided to go back to Scotland. I told her not to, that the Berwick witch trials are going to happen this December and she’s going to be caught in them, but she said that Scotland was her home and she would take her chances. So…” Lucy stops. “I tried, Garcia. To save her.”

“I know you did.” Flynn hopes they don’t get back to the present and find that Agnes was still brutally done to death, but he’s hoping that about a number of people, including his own father. If there is any trust in the fact that the future is fluid, that even horrible outcomes are not set in stone, that’s the only thing that will save them. On that note, if they are going to send Christian back to Sept-Tours, they have to be absolutely sure that there is no chance of him collapsing again a few weeks or months or years from now. “Christian. Are you _sure_ he’s completely healed? Did you have to use another dose of Elixir?”

“No, he seemed all right, and I tried with my magic again, just in case.” Lucy pauses. “I’ve been so busy trying to get you out of jail, I haven’t – I haven’t hidden Ashmole 782 just yet, and if worse came to worse, I didn’t want it out of my hands. It could have been some kind of useful bargaining chip to free you, if need be, and…”

“What?” Flynn glances at her with a start. “No, no, you couldn’t have given it up. Especially not for me. Not if it’s our only hope of defeating Rittenhouse in the future, you – ”

“I would have still traded it.” Lucy’s voice is quiet, and she glances away. “I don’t know if it was smart, but I would have. And besides, that isn’t the only thing I could have done with it. Now that I have almost the full manuscript, I could have found some more powerful magic, and informed them in no uncertain terms that I was prepared to use it.”

Flynn raises both eyebrows at the mental image of Lucy marching furiously on Whitehall and threatening the entire English monarchy with their worst supernatural nightmare if they did not let her trash but much-beloved idiot vampire husband out of the clink. He chews his cheek, almost sorry that they were deprived of that, but he supposes that it’s for the best. “Either way, you wouldn’t have had much time,” he points out. “It’s less than a month until All Souls. If we’re going to hide Ashmole 782 now, we have maybe three weeks to do it.”

“I know.” Lucy’s lips quiver, but she reaches out to grab his hand. “I just – I wasn’t – either way. I was _never_ leaving here without you.”

Flynn is touched by that, despite himself, and leans over to kiss her hair. They sit in silence for a few moments, and then he decides that they really cannot countenance wasting any more time at all. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get to work.”

They work the rest of the day and through the night, a process enlivened by Flynn collapsing from hunger around three o’clock in the morning. He comes around to the sight of Lucy’s extremely cross face for not telling her that he needed to feed, and they lose the rest of the wee hours so she can take him upstairs and deal with the situation. He can’t take too much from her at once, and it’s hard enough to hold himself back, but they do their best. It’s around dawn when they hear someone returning to the house, and go downstairs to find an extremely grubby Christian and Kit, looking like two conspiratorial peas in a pod. At the sight of Flynn, their jaws drop. “So thou art telling me,” Marlowe enquiries icily, “that we wasted many good hours digging in the shit of the Thames, in the name of nobly liberating thee from thy foul prison, only to find _thou wert here all along?!_ Comfortably tucked up in thy wife’s bosom, from the looks of it? Sweet Christ, I _hate_ thee, fiend.”

“Sorry.” Flynn shrugs apologetically, remembering again how those pronouns can really be applied to make a point. “We’ve also been working for hours, if it helps?”

Kit continues to glare at him, until he finally stomps off for a bath, a bed, and doubtless serious self-reflection on why he keeps getting himself into stupid situations to help the de Clermont brothers. Christian, for his part, runs to hug Flynn and pronounce himself greatly relieved that he has been freed, even if not by their toilsome efforts. “Did they ever tell you why you were taken, Uncle Garcia?” he asks. “Was it just for the illegal magic?”

Flynn hesitates. If he hasn’t yet broached the subject with Lucy, he definitely isn’t getting into it with Christian, especially when he’s not entirely sure that all of Hubbard’s plans for vengeance have been defanged. Elizabeth said that she would cancel the order for Gabriel’s execution, but the fact remains that they are leaving Hubbard here by necessity, to continue to plot and scheme, and it would be best if Christian left London as soon as possible for any number of reasons. This is another situation that could have exploded by the time they get back to the twenty-first century, and all of London could be hostile territory for the de Clermonts if the changes are allowed time to take deep root. Another thing Flynn can’t avoid, but he feels the guilt add to the ever-rising pile. Finally he says, “The magic, yes. Come on, we’ve had enough of a break, Lucy. Let’s get back to work.”

The next fortnight passes in this fashion. Lucy is working every protective spell she can think of, the complex layers of enchantments that will hide Ashmole 782 from creature view until her past-future self calls it up in the Bodleian in 2017. The last question is where they’re going to hide it. It has to be in position for Elias Ashmole to acquire it sometime in the seventeenth century, so it can be donated to Oxford at his death in 1692, but that leaves almost a hundred years of free agency. Finally one evening, a week before All Hallows, Marlowe – who has, despite all his better judgment, returned to help them yet again – clears his throat. “I could take it to mine own alma mater,” he says. “Corpus Christi.”

“Corpus Christi – ?” Lucy looks up with a start. “Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, right? That was where you went.”

“Indeed.” Kit gets the insulted look of a Cambridge man at the very nerve of the suggestion that he would go to _Oxford._ “They have a fine library of such manuscripts. I could deposit it without suspicion, as all know that my interests are… unusual, and if any man was to question where I had gained it, I could put him off with reference to the queen’s interests.”

“Corpus Christi.” Flynn frowns. It occurs to him that Jessica has, or rather will have, an academic position at Corpus Christi’s namesake twin in Oxford, though he doesn’t know if that’s relevant or just a connection he’s plucking out from a passing coincidence. This is certainly a plausible place for it to wait long enough to be collected by Elias Ashmole, and it might trade or circulate among private hands in the meantime – especially if someone realized what it was. Is Jessica herself still in the past? Is she some sort of agent in this transaction? They already traced her to 1485 in Innsbruck, according to what Lucy said, where she rescued their shared ancestress, Anneke Proktor, Henry de Prestyn’s mother. Does she have one last part to play in all this? Would she conceivably end up there, or –

Never mind. Flynn imagines that this is the best chance they have, and he looks at Kit with a start. “You’d do that? For us – for me?”

“Garcia,” Marlowe says, in more-than-mild exasperation. “I would have, and indeed often have done, absolutely anything for thy dense and frequently ridiculous bloodsucker arse, no matter how much woe and nonsense it inevitably leads me to. Ask another question.”

Flynn blinks, realizing something that has been there all along, but which he has somehow managed not to see in its full complexity until that very moment. Now that he has, he does indeed feel rather ridiculous. He opens his mouth and sits there like that for thirty seconds, then shuts it with a click. “Ah,” he says. “Well. I – yes.”

Marlowe casts a deeply judgmental side-eye at him, then glances away, and Flynn gets awkwardly to his feet and shuffles over, which is something of a demeaning maneuver for a six-foot-four vampire to perform. He glances questioningly at Lucy, who nods with a similar _oh-thank-God-he-finally-figured-it-out_ look on her face (does _everyone_ know things about him that he does not? This seems alarming). With that, Flynn reaches out, takes Kit’s face in his hands, and gently, sweetly kisses him. When they pull back, he says, “I’m – you – you know how I am. I’m sorry. But thank you.”

“Thou fool.” Marlowe’s voice is soft, and his hand cups Flynn’s cheek. “I should murder you in your sleep if I did not love you so.”

Flynn ducks his head bashfully, figures that he deserves that, and they exchange the look of the could-be lovers, the might-have-beens, who both finally realize that it will never be anything more than that, but which they can both accept and come to terms with nonetheless. Marlowe takes a deep breath, then lets it out shakily, squaring his shoulders. “Well,” he says, brisk again, businesslike. “Do you wish me to take the manuscript to Cambridge?”

“I think so, yes,” Lucy says. “But if you go by yourself, won’t you be in danger?”

“Sir Walter has said that he shall provide me with an escort, and indeed the pleasure of his company on the road.” Kit raises a wry eyebrow. “Since he has begun to pay court upon Bess Throckmorton without the queen’s permission, I imagine he feels it meet to be out of London for a spell, just in case.”

Flynn coughs, as doubtless he and Lucy both remember how that goes, but decides not to intervene on a presently opportune course. “So that’s settled,” he says. “Except for one thing. The fragment, the instructions to our past-future selves. This must be when you write it.”

“The – yes.” Lucy looks startled, as well as intimidated that this is when she has to make sure that they don’t blow it retroactively. “Yes, but – are you – ?”

“Yes,” Flynn says firmly. “Remember, I have to buy a piece of Ashmole 782 that I can’t read, in Prague, 1875. I take it back to Sept-Tours and I leave it there, until I bring you home for the first time, you’re startled that it’s your handwriting, and you solve it for me.”

Their eyes meet, the silence is briefly poignant, and then Lucy nods. She goes to the manuscript, pulls off the blank frontispiece, and dips her quill, considering. Then she starts to write in the distinctive Voynich cipher, a message that Flynn can’t read by sight, but remembers well what it says. When it’s done, Lucy sits back and recites:

 _“If you are reading this, we have been successful. With the assistance of the School of Night, the book has been concealed in the archives and the spell cast to ensure its preservation. Those in search of it cannot be allowed to succeed. You who are the key, unlock the message in the same manner as before. When the time comes, you will have their names. The alchemical wedding makes the bridge. Beneath the wolf and lion lies the ring._ ”

“I – yes.” It gives Flynn a faint chill, even knowing it, and he watches as Lucy puts the omega locking spell on it, as the horseshoe brand appears and disappears into the flesh of her palm with a faint hiss. She then writes in the rest of the message: the list of names including Amelie Wallis and Agnes Sampson, the Knights of Lazarus sigil, the places in London where they began their search, all the clues that she and Flynn will uncover in the Sept-Tours library together, that will set them on this path without being too obvious or giving away too much. Playing dice with the future is a very delicate game, as they have learned to their cost, and everything that Lucy says here must stand the test of time, must operate under the assumption that any of their enemies could read it at any point between now and the present day, and they know for a fact that – as long as nothing major gets changed for them – they will figure it out some day. Lucy folds the paper up, then gets up, wraps up the rest of the manuscript, ties it together, and hands it to Kit. “You have to see this safely to Cambridge.”

“I shall, my lady.” There’s a faint smile in the daemon’s eyes as he looks down at her, despite everything, and Flynn doesn’t know why people in his life love him, but they do, and he is fortunate for it. “So long as you kick Garcia in the backside when he deserves it.”

Lucy snorts, as if to say there will be no trouble on that front. Then she steps forward and hugs Marlowe, startling him immensely. But after a moment, he relaxes into the embrace, hugs her back, and steps away with a self-conscious throat-clearing. “I have a reputation to maintain,” he reminds them. “You must tell no one that you knew me as anything but.”

“We won’t,” Flynn says. “And in turn, you can’t tell anyone about any of this. Even – especially – me.”

“Well then.” Marlowe raises an eyebrow. “How fortunate that you know beyond all doubt that I can take a secret to my grave.”

Flynn does, and thinks of how Kit is going to die in three more years, stabbed in that tavern brawl in Deptford, and he steps forward to hug his friend too. “You and Raleigh go safely. If this – if it works, all creatures everywhere will owe you a debt that shall not be forgotten.”

“Daemons usually are.” Marlowe smiles crookedly, tucks the package under his arm, and pulls on his cloak. “Goodbye, my lord, my lady. I shall not, I think, see you again.”

He won’t, at that, and they walk him to the door of the Old Lodge, bid him farewell, and watch very carefully until they can be sure that he has gotten  away unmolested. Lucy releases Corra, in the shape of an ordinary brown-feathered bird, to fly with him as far as the outskirts of London, where he will stay in a coaching inn until Raleigh joins him tomorrow, and they make north for Cambridge. With that, their final charge in 1590 is done, and all they have to do now is make ready to leave. It will take a few days to ensure the smooth running of the Old Lodge and the protection of the de Clermont family, and Flynn is tempted to just hang it all and go, but he can’t take this final reckless wager with Christian’s safety. They can make it to Greenwich in time to leave on All Hallows, or in the very early hours of All Souls, and they’ll have to run like hell.

They spend the last few days working like absolute maniacs: sending letters, going places at odd hours, making a final visit to the royal court under cover of darkness, and finally being sure, as much as they possibly can be, that their departure will not leave the timeline, the city, the de Clermont family, and the politics of the realm in absolute shambolic disarray. Christian helps with this, as Flynn thinks that they’ll just have to swear him to secrecy and send him back to France with a gag order. They haven’t explained things to Christian all over again, or removed the memory spell, but they’ve also given up on actively trying to conceal it. He’s confused, but going along with it. Could be worse.

They go down to the wire, but finally, in the late afternoon of October thirty-first, All Hallows Eve, they leave the Old Lodge for the last time and make their way out of the city, toward Greenwich, to timewalk back the instant the gateway opens at midnight on All Souls. Christian goes with them, since he wants to see them off, and while Flynn is grateful for getting to do properly it this time, he’s also not sure how on earth he is supposed to say goodbye and close the door. Maybe it was best that he was unconscious last time, and he’s already an anxious wreck about their very narrow window of time to get to Liechtenstein back in the present, whether it will make a difference that they used a bit of the philosopher’s stone, and all the rest. Besides, Rittenhouse is there. They don’t know what they’re walking into, or what the remainder of the family has been up to in their absence, or what has been changed, or any of it. It could be a full-scale war. It could be anything at all. Flynn has to fight the compulsion to just stay here, since that was never what this trip was about, and he can’t re-live his own life while in constant fear of running into his other self again. Let go, let go. Let go. Always so simple, and so monstrously, terribly difficult.

They make it to Greenwich without any delays, at least. It’s All Hallows, the sun sets early, the folk are out at soulin’ fires, and finally, as the clocks inch closer and closer to the witching hour, they have to go. Flynn and Lucy tramp out into the dark woods together, near as they can reckon to the spot where they arrived the first time, and Christian’s eyes go wide. “So this is – ” He seems briefly overcome by the magnitude of it, the realization of immensity. “You’re truly traveling back. Forward, I mean. In time.”

“Yes.” Flynn looks at him, looks as if he can never have enough, as Lucy is preparing for the jump. He reaches out and hugs Christian ferociously, as Christian hugs him back, and does not, _cannot_ wrap his head around the sensation of stopping it, of it not being, of ending. “Look, when you go back to Sept-Tours, the rest of the family, this – they won’t know. They won’t remember. You can’t tell them. I’m sorry that it’s so unfair, but… it is.”

“I can do that, Uncle Garcia.” Christian looks back at him steadily, with the eyes of a man, not a boy, and Flynn loves him so much that he wants to die. “It’s our secret.”

“It is,” Flynn agrees roughly, hugging him one more time, and then – somehow, impossibly, terribly – they step apart, the embrace is over, the moment is done. “You have to – ”

And at that, he stops. Stares at Christian, hoping that it’s a trick of the light or some other triviality, even as he knows it’s not. There’s a fresh stain of blood on Christian’s doublet, right where his injury was the first time – if, exactly as Flynn has been afraid of all along, his reparative dose of Elixir has worn off, he’s still wounded, and that there is nothing else to do for it. As Flynn looks at it, his chest shrivels into ice. It’s midnight on All Souls. They have to go right now. They have no time to return to the city, which would take hours, and certainly no chance of bringing Ashmole 782 back from its secret confinement in Cambridge, undoing their months of blood and sweat and tears. That means they either have to leave Christian here, wounded, knowing that it will get worse and he will die, or –

“Lucy.” Flynn’s voice comes out in a hoarse, maddened croak. “Lucy, look, he – ”

Distracted from her preparations, Lucy whirls around, and sees the same thing. An expression of total horror crosses her face, even as Christian himself cottons on, looks down, and sees the blood. He presses his hand to it, looking confused and guilty. “I don’t know where that came from. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine, but – ”

“You will _not_ be fine.” Lucy’s voice is shrill. “That’s your wound from Rittenhouse, the one that almost killed you. We thought it was healed. We thought it was better. But if it’s not – ”

Christian glances between them, frowning, uncomprehending. Flynn and Lucy, for their part, exchange an utterly aghast look. They cannot – they cannot even _think_ of –

And yet, and _yet –_

Perhaps they could do it, Flynn thinks wildly. They would have to return Christian to 1590 when they were done, as any extended absence would have the same effect as his death, and there were all the original reasons as to why they couldn’t just bring him and Asher with them from the past in the first place. But if they are not literally going to abandon him to die alone in this dark forest, which clearly is not happening, then –

“You – ” Lucy’s voice is even shakier, as both of them know that this is unspeakable insanity, with completely unpredictable consequences. “You’re going to have to come with us.”

“What – _with_ you?” Christian stares at them. “To the _future?”_

“Just – briefly.” Lucy can’t seem to tear her eyes off him, looks transfixed, hypnotized, pale as death. “Just until we can fix that and bring you back. That’s – that’s all.”

Christian continues to stare at them as if they’ve both gone mad – which perhaps is not an inaccurate assessment of the situation. “I can’t do that,” he says, shaking his head. “No, no. I can’t just – our family, Uncle Garcia, if I don’t come home, they’ll think – the _future –_ ”

“You have to do it.” Flynn might faint, but somehow he’s still upright, he’s still talking, even as the world has slowed to a nauseous, dreamy crawl. “Christian. Please.”

Somewhere across the dark river, bells start to call midnight. It’s All Souls. It’s now or never. It’s this or nothing. Life or death. It all ends this way. The culmination.

“It’s open.” Lucy’s voice is strained, desperately terrified, as she reaches out for both of them as if she might suddenly be snatched away. “The gateway, I can feel it, it’s open. We have to go now! We can’t – Garcia, we have to go!”

She is on the brink of panic, and Flynn feels it until there is space for nothing else inside him. He can see Lucy, and he can see Christian, and he is being asked to leave one or the other of them behind, and that, by any reasonable measure, he is not going to do. He does not know what is going to become of this and he knows that it’s a terrible idea, objectively speaking. But it is everything, and so, at the end, it is the only thing.

Flynn grabs hold of Christian with one hand, and Lucy with the other. He can hear the roar of a place out of time and between the spaces in the stars, can sense the dislocation and the darkness beyond, as 1590 crumbles away like a faint and faded dream. It is the three of them, and then it is nothing, as they hurtle past the gates of the world, of all the known, and almost gently, almost beautifully, they plunge into the abyss.


	24. True North

The first thing that Lucy knows is mud. Just as before, it is the only sensory experience that she has space for, that fills her face and stains her clothes and soaks wetly into the places where her pulled-apart atoms aren’t entirely sure how to fit back together. Her head is roaring, her breath crushed out of her lungs but her heart hammering madly, and her stomach is in a nauseous roil. Also as before, they are out somewhere in the dark woods, but rather than the dank chill of an English November, it’s warm, sticky, and in her heavy dress and cloak, she’s quickly too hot. The scent is familiar, as is the sense of the magic, green and old and strong. It’s the witchwoods outside Denise and Michelle’s house in Madison County, the spot they left from in the first place. And unless Lucy very much misses her guess, it’s once more May first, just as when they arrived in 1590 – the six-month inverse of All Souls. They’re back, that’s good, and at least –

Oh, God. Oh, God.

Her eyes fly open, still burned with the vestigial afterglare of forcible temporo-spatial relocation. Her vision is a field of dancing spots, but as the surrounding trees come into hazy view, she can also make out her not one but two companions. Flynn is lying on his back, and Christian (Christian, _Christian,_ oh God, they did the one thing they knew all along that they couldn’t do, they brought him back with them, he’s _here)_ is sprawled atop him, their combined weight having blasted a sizeable impact crater into the soft mud and moss. As Lucy is trying to reconnect her limbs to her cerebral cortex, Flynn groans, stirs, takes that same necessary moment to recollect what in bumfuck tarnation just happened – then sits up like a shot, catching Christian in his arms and easing him onto the ground. “Christian?” he croaks, half-hysterical (impressive that it’s not entirely). “Christian?”

Lucy crouches frantically on her nephew’s other side, trying to support his lolling head and take stock of the damage. Christian’s eyes are rolled back so far that she can only see the whites, a bead of drool hangs from his slack mouth, and he makes convulsive jerking movements and strangled, whining noises. It’s as if some primeval human instinct is desperate for him to breathe, knows that he’s badly hurt and had his wind thoroughly knocked out (not to mention traveled through time to a moment two hundred and fifty years after he died and where he has never existed) and is overloading his system with adrenaline to no apparent result. Flynn looks up at her, his eyes wild with panic. “What should I do?”

“I don’t – I don’t know.” Lucy has no frame of reference for this, doesn’t know if the entire timeline is in slow-motion collapse back in the sixteenth century, the history of the de Clermont family on a collision course to radical revision or destruction that can only be stopped if they return Christian to his proper chronological moment as soon as possible. She looks back at Flynn, just as terrified and hoping he’ll tell her. “We need to get help.”

She stands up, turning around, just as a light goes on in the house. The door flies open, and two figures in their bathrobes come hurtling across the grass. The next moment, Lucy is in her godmothers’ arms, Denise and Michelle are hugging the breath out of her and talking wildly over each other, and Lucy is desperately relieved to see them, but she needs to cut it to the bare essentials. “We had an unexpected passenger. This is Garcia’s – ”

She debates between _nephew_ and _son,_ since both are accurate, and settles on the latter. “Son. This is Garcia’s son. We had to bring him back from 1590, it’s a – it’s a very long story, but we don’t have time. He’s hurt. He needs help.”

Denise and Michelle goggle at her, then snap into action with Denise’s well-drilled federal agent precision. Flynn scoops up Christian, and carries him inside. As Lucy follows them into the house, she flinches and screws up her eyes at the electric light, which is harsh and glaring after six months of candles, torches, lanterns, and wick lamps. She can hear things humming and buzzing, the old fridge clanking, the rush of the pipes, all the _noise_ which has been so absent, and tries to shut it out so she can focus. Michelle has thrown an old sheet on the couch, where Flynn sets Christian down, and Lucy is already fumbling in her pocket for the philosopher’s stone. She has a brief and horrifying conviction that it somehow fell out on the trip, then finds it, and looks at Denise. “I need wine.”

Denise pivots around, runs to the kitchen, and returns with a half-full bottle of grocery-store cabernet sauvignon and a glass. Lucy pours some out, drops the stone in, swirls it, and watches more of it be eaten away. Then she plucks it out and moves to the couch, trying not to look at the spreading stain of blood on Christian’s chest. She lifts his slack head and puts the goblet to his lips; it feels like half of it spills uselessly down his chin. But he swallows enough to get the wound to vanish again, and his eyes close all the way. His head falls back, and he slumps on the couch, completely unconscious. The silence that follows this, as all four of them stare at him in mingled terror, shock, and disbelief, is loud enough to topple cities.

At last, Michelle breaks it. “Sweetheart,” she says. “You’re – you’re _here.”_

“Yes. And we’re going to have to go right away. What – what time is it? Exactly.”

“It’s – ” Denise glances at the clock. “12:17 am, on May first, 2018. We had a feeling you might be back today, but we thought it’d be closer to dawn.”

“Seventeen minutes past midnight.” Lucy looks at Flynn. “So we have twenty-three hours and forty-three minutes to get to Liechtenstein and save Gabriel before the six-month deadline expires. How are we going to do that?”

“Give me a minute.” Flynn has been barely able to tear his eyes off Christian or otherwise process this at all, but he likewise knows that they have no leisure to let up on the gas, literally. “Go take a shower. I’ll make calls.”

A shower. What a novel concept. Lucy has definitely thought about wanting one, but it occurs to her almost in a vague and theoretical fashion. She heads upstairs, flinches again when she snaps the bathroom light on, and stares at herself in the mirror like she’s seen a ghost. It’s Lucy, at least. Lucy in her Tudor clothes, Lucy the witch, Lucy looking like she is not from around here in any sense of the word and doesn’t feel like she is. Her hands fumble as she pulls the laces and hooks and buttons free, steps out of the crumples of fabric, and switches on the shower. She steps under it, lets out a gasp of long-denied pleasure when the hot spray hits her face, and watches the water turn a very dark grey as it swirls down the drain. She shampoos her hair about three times, uses an entire bar of soap, and reminds herself that there is no time to luxuriate like a sultana in the hammam. She shuts off the water, gets out, dries off, and goes in search of her old clothes in her room. They feel shockingly light, almost immodest, when she puts them on. She combs out her hair, wrings it out, decides that will do for personal hygiene, and goes back downstairs.

When she returns to the living room, she finds Michelle working her healing magic on Christian, Denise pacing, and Flynn on the phone with a very harried expression. He thanks whoever he’s talking to, hangs up, then says, “Well. I forgot that Liechtenstein has the one capital city in the world that doesn’t have an international airport or railway station. The closest place we could fly into is Zurich, in Switzerland, and we’ll have to drive from there. Also, we’ll have to hope that this means twenty-three hours in straight chronological succession, regardless of what clocks say, because otherwise with the time change, we lose six hours immediately. As far as flights, there’s a nonstop service from JFK, but it doesn’t leave until tonight. We’d have to drive down to the city anyway. Otherwise, we can fly out of Syracuse this afternoon, two-hour layover in Dulles, arrive at eight AM. If we’re going commercial, that is. Otherwise, I can try to get a charter with literally no notice at all, so – ”

Lucy blinks, trying to absorb this torrent of important and rather distressing information. “We can’t fly to Liechtenstein?” Presumably this was part of the reason it was a good place for a secret hideout, but damn it, guys. _Really?_

“No,” Flynn says grimly. “Vaduz doesn’t have an airport. And even if we took the earlier hop out of Syracuse, our first flight wouldn’t leave until – ” he stops to count briefly on his fingers – “almost fifteen hours from now. Jesus, no, this isn’t going to work. Hold on, I’m going to have to see if I can get a bizjet. At midnight in the fucking boondocks.”

With that, he snatches up his phone again – Lucy has to admire how he has hit the ground running in the twenty-first century, while she feels almost as displaced from it as she did upon first arrival in the sixteenth, but panic is a hell of a motivator – and whirls off to make another call. Lucy stands there, feeling rather helpless, as Denise and Michelle continue to stare at her. Clearly they would love to ask her how the trip went, but are aware that it is a very bad time for it, and everyone’s eyes keep flickering to the unconscious Christian on the couch. Finally Michelle ventures, “Ashmole 782, did you – ?”

“Yes, we found it, we hid it.” Lucy is too nervous to remain still for very long. She wants to tell them about meeting her dad, but that will get them too far off track, and everything can be saved for later. “Is there anything we should know before we – before we go? About what’s happened here, or – with Rittenhouse, perhaps?”

Denise and Michelle grimace, then exchange a glance, weighing up how to answer that. Then as Michelle continues to work on Christian, Denise says, “We’ve been hearing very disturbing things out of Venice, yes. Olivia has said – well, we hope she’s wrong. But she passed on a rumor that the Congregation had been dissolved completely, and someone named Rittenhouse had announced that he was now in charge. It’s been hard to get clear information. The creature world is in lockdown. It’s – we don’t know what’s happening.”

“Figures,” Lucy mutters, though even David goddamn Rittenhouse himself is not their biggest problem right now. She looks at Flynn, who is pacing like a caged tiger and having an argument with someone in what may be Italian. It is a further few excruciating minutes until he hangs up, and before he can say anything, Lucy blurts out, “Well?”

“I can get us a Gulfstream out of JFK at seven-thirty AM,” Flynn says. “Direct to Zurich, which is an eight-hour flight. Puts us on the ground around three-thirty PM Eastern, nine-thirty local, and we’ll bypass customs and get a car. It’s just under two hours to Liechtenstein, and I am damn well betting that I can make that faster. So that leaves us about six hours to get to JFK, which is usually at least a four-and-a-half-hour drive. If you want to grab some food or anything before we go, you should do it now.”

Lucy looks at Denise, who fetches her a large box of leftovers for the road, and Flynn himself goes upstairs only long enough to change and rinse the worst of the mud off. He charges back downstairs, scoops Denise’s car keys off the table without asking, and at her miffed look, says, “Obviously I’ll bring it back. You need to go anywhere before then, you can walk.”

With that, he gazes back at Christian, who still hasn’t woken up. It’s clear that they’re going to have to leave him here in the Christophers’ care, and that it tears Flynn’s guts out to do it, especially not knowing what they might come back to. But they really, _really_ are on the clock, and Flynn bends down to kiss Christian’s forehead, smoothing his hair out of his face and lost in a reverie. Then he straightens up, and the look in his eyes would strike the fear of God into even the most hardened of sinners. Garcia Flynn de Clermont is on the warpath, and the entire world had better get out of the way. “Come on,” he says. “Time to go.”

Lucy follows him out into the night, to Denise’s workmanlike silver Volvo, and they get in, buckling up. Flynn summons it to life, approves of the fact that she has been so conscientious as to fill up the gas tank the other day, and pulls out with a screech of tires. He guns it at eighty miles an hour through mostly-deserted downtown, “Thank You For Driving Carefully In Our Community” signs flashing in futile protest, and Lucy wonders luridly how many speeding tickets are going to turn up in the mailbox (Denise will probably get Flynn to pay them, and it’s not like he can’t afford it). At least it being the middle of the night in upstate New York means that there isn’t much traffic, and she resists the urge to grab the armrest. Especially after sixteenth-century transport, his driving feels particularly _Fast and Furious._

They merge onto the highway and steam south, passing only a few lone headlights here and there. Flynn switches on the radio, clearly needing something to distract him from his thoughts, and Lucy jumps again. It’s late-night oldies, almost hypnotic, wildly jarring when you think that a few hours ago they were in the dark deer park of 1590 Greenwich, and she keeps blinking in case she might wake up and they’ll be back in the Old Lodge. She doesn’t know if she wants it or not. She opens the food box and tries to decide if she wants to eat, but she doesn’t think so. There’s nothing but this.

Lucy dozes against the headrest, sounds fading in and out, slipping between dreaming and waking. Even when she’s awake, she doesn’t talk, not wanting to distract Flynn from his iron-willed concentration, and watches the lights play on his face. The hours slip past, and the eastern horizon is turning pink as they finally reach the city, the ink-black silhouettes of Manhattan skyscrapers printed on the marbled sky and giving Lucy another frisson of complete unreality. They’re just early enough to miss the first round of commuter hell, but after all, it is the City That Never Sleeps, and they run into enough traffic on the I-678 toll plaza to JFK, stuck in the trundling line of early-morning departures, to make Flynn swear and hit his hands against the steering wheel. If they don’t start moving, it seems likely that his next move will be to get out of the car and start literally biting his way through the impediment, but fortunately he spots an opening, executes a patented New York no-look, no-signal cut-in, and magnificently ignores the horn and middle finger that this unsurprisingly produces. They speed through, spot the airport grounds in a few more minutes, and rattle to a halt in mid-term parking. It’s 6:04 am.

JFK is a complete sensory assault. There are fluorescent lights and honking cabs and swishing doors and recorded announcements, steel and glass and the distant roar of jets taking off or landing, flashing control towers, people talking loudly, hauling mountains of luggage, complaining about how the Mets blew it last night, buying coffee, diddling on their smartphones with the endless glowing little screens, until Lucy feels like a technophobic old grandmother who wants to bark at these young’uns to get rid of their dadgum gadgets. Why do you _need_ to be on Facebook every three minutes? Just really have to Instagram yourself at six o’clock in the morning and let your followers know where your #BigCityBreak is, apparently. Lucy wants to cry, afraid that she’s going to shut down and crawl into a dark corner, until Flynn grabs her arm and hustles her through an unmarked door. “This way.”

They descend some back stairways, she keeps waiting for some official to pop up and ask to see their ID, but no such person appears. Flynn opens another door at the bottom, and they jog out onto the tarmac, baggage carts rolling toward the dark shadows of jumbo jets parked at gates. They cross a taxiway lined in blinking lights, Lucy is more convinced than ever that _someone_ is going to stop them – you can’t just run out onto the airfield of a major international hub, especially in frigging New York, and not get dogpiled by the authorities, shut it down for hours, and delay the entire world – but still nobody. They go through a door in a tall barbed-wire fence, emerge in a smaller hangar area, and Flynn points to a stylish ivory private jet sitting a few dozen yards away. “That one.”

“How did you – ” Lucy supposes belatedly that she could have helped, she could have done a spell to ensure that they weren’t noticed, but she didn’t even think about it. “Just convinced everyone en masse that they didn’t want to see you?”

“Something like that,” Flynn says with a very grim smile. “It takes a lot of effort, and it doesn’t last very long. Mesmer is less concentrated the more people you have to apply it to, but besides, our friends said they’d leave the way open.”

Lucy opens her mouth to ask who those friends are, decides she would rather not know (one of them should have plausible deniability) and remembers Gabriel telling her something similar, about the effects of mesmer on many people versus just one. Flynn must be expending a huge amount of energy to make everyone look away just for a few crucial instants, and she hopes he doesn’t run himself to collapse before they even make it to Liechtenstein. “Garcia,” she says, as they climb up the steps and duck into the luxe, leather-upholstered interior. Two men with dark pomaded hairdos and expensive watches are already inside, and Lucy tries not to think about the (high) likelihood that they are consiglieres of the Genovese or Gambino or other of the Five Families, off to do very shady things at Swiss banks. “Just – remember that I’m here, all right? I can help.”

Flynn glances at her, as they sit down in two large seats that face each other. “Right,” he says, as if only now thinking of it. “Yes, I know. I just – I want to get there now.”

Since they’ve arrived early, their compatriots see no reason to wait for 7:30, and the door is shut soon after by a perky-looking stewardess straight out of a 1950s Pan Am commercial. They roll into takeoff lineup among the other light aircraft, and it is 7:27am when the wheels leave the ground. To say the least, this is by far the fastest that Lucy has ever gotten out of JFK, and now that she’s marrying into an extremely rich family, the temptation is shamefully there to do it more often. She is well aware that the massively unfair agglomeration of wealth in a small percentage of private hands is the leading evil on planet Earth today, that late-stage capitalism and excessive air travel are destroying the climate, so on and so forth. But she really wishes that it wasn’t so nice. She will have to chide herself for being a weak-willed collaborationist and class traitor at a later date. Why couldn’t they have returned where they left, in London? It would be so much easier to get to Zurich from there.

They fly east, into the daybreak, as Lucy tries to get comfortable on the plush seat, which feels completely alien to her. Their almost-certainly-Mafia traveling companions prove to be very polite, extravagantly complimenting her and making pleasant conversation. They don’t explain how they know Flynn or what they are planning to do in Switzerland, and Lucy doesn’t ask. For his part, Flynn is barely paying attention to anything, staring out the window and tapping his fingers relentlessly on his thigh. The stewardess serves coffee and fresh bagels, and Lucy has gotten hungry enough to eat a little, though she swallows hard and suddenly isn’t sure if it will stay down. But her body seems to have recombobulated in the twenty-first century, at least the earthly functions. Her head still hasn’t got a fucking clue.

A few hours into the flight, one of the mafiosos gets up to go to the lavatory with the _New York Times,_ the other puts on a sleep mask and earplugs, and once he’s snoring, Flynn pulls out his phone. Ordinarily, of course, you’re not supposed to make calls on a plane, but that may be another rule that only applies to the little people. He stares at it, seems to be screwing up his courage, then hits the button, puts it to his ear, and waits tensely.

Lucy looks at him questioningly, but Flynn holds up a finger. She can hear it ringing on the other end. Then someone answers, and Flynn’s face crumples, as hard as he tries to hold it in. “Hey,” he says shakily. “Hey. Jiya. It’s me. It’s – Dad.”

There’s a long pause, punctuated only by the distant hum of the jet engines. Then Jiya utters a strangled yelp audible even through the tinny cell phone speaker, and starts talking very fast. Flynn lets her do so, then confirms that yes, they just got back, yes, they are on the way to Europe right now, and no, they really have not had time to catch up on anything. Then he says, “Can I – can I speak to Grand-mère, please?”

Lucy glances at him, as Flynn sits there with his eyes closed, as if he’s bracing himself for a drop on a massive rollercoaster. His face once more can barely contain his emotions when Lucy hears Maria de Clermont’s crisp, echoed _“Oui?”_

 _“Bonjour, Maman.”_ Flynn’s voice is even less steady. _“C’est moi.”_

It takes several more moments for Maria to react, and since Flynn switches into Old French too fast even for Lucy to follow, she doesn’t catch many of the specifics. She gets the gist of it, however, and listens for _Christian,_ to see if Flynn has broken _that_ particularly earth-shattering bit of news yet, but he seems to feel, understandably, that it’s not a conversation to have over the phone. Both of them sound as if they’re trying to talk over each other, with six months of very important things to catch up on, but Flynn finally says “Zurich,” in a tone of urgent finality. That seems to settle things, and when he hangs up a few minutes later, clearly sensing Lucy burning a hole through his head, he says, “She’s going to meet us there.”

“Can she – ” Lucy bites back a stupid question about whether Maria can get there in time. If she’s in France, it’s probably just a nice morning jog away. “Where are they? Are they in Sept-Tours? Are they all right? Do they know anything about what’s – ”

Flynn raises a hand. “One thing at a time. Yes, they’re in Sept-Tours. They have – she also said that she had things to tell me in person, so I don’t know what the hell has gone on exactly, but I think they’re all there. The ones we left, at any rate.”

“So – ” Lucy didn’t want to get her hopes up too far, but she was clinging to a small, irrational desire anyway. “Your father isn’t… he’s not…”

“No.” Flynn says it heavily, leaning back against the headrest and staring up at the plane ceiling. “No, Papa’s still dead.”

There’s a moment of silence. Neither of them were really _expecting_ to call Sept-Tours and find that Asher de Clermont had magically never been gone, but they both feel it like a blow. Then Flynn says, “Jiya guessed that we might be back, because some invention of Rufus’s called the TimeMaster 3000 had a major spike around six o’clock this morning – which would be midnight in New York, right when we came through. Apparently that means that something we did in the past caused big enough ramifications to be detected in the present, and that’s not good. I can imagine that it was taking Christian out of his timeline, and – ”

“You didn’t tell her?” Lucy didn’t think so, but Flynn gives a small, pained little head shake of confirmation. “How are you going to break _that_ news?”

“I honestly have no idea.” Flynn keeps staring at the injection molding. “Part of me is terrified _to_ even tell her, because what if – what if he dies? What if he doesn’t wake up? What if we can’t figure out a cure for him? What if his brains are permanently scrambled eggs? It’s not like I want to bring Christian back here and never give them a chance to see him, but like _this –_ we weren’t going to leave him, _I_ was never going to leave him, but I have no idea what I’ve done, to him or to the world or to our family or any of it. Whatever happens because of this, it’s my fault. I’ll live with that, but it’s… it’s a lot.”

Lucy steals a glance at the snoozing mafioso, but he definitely looks to be out, and the one seeing a man about a dog is taking his sweet time. “How long do you think Christian could be away from home in 1590, before the rest of the family started to worry?”

“I don’t know that either.” Flynn blows out a frustrated breath. “Gabriel is – was – very protective of him, you saw that, and they’ll be concerned that he went to London in a bad frame of mind and then doesn’t write or send word, hasn’t even been seen around town, nobody knows where he is. Papa may encourage us not to smother him, but – a month? Maybe two? But I’d be surprised if it was much longer. If Gabriel goes to London to look for him, I’m sure that Hubbard will have another nasty trap in mind, and he may not waste his time asking for Elizabeth’s permission to execute him. That, or – ”

Flynn trails off, face blasted and bleak, staring at nothing, as Lucy reaches forward to put her hand on his knee, and he jumps. He looks at her as if he wants to say something, but can’t summon up the right words, and looks away, rubbing his chin. Then he says, “Did Gabriel tell you what happened with Henry de Prestyn’s death? All of it, I mean. This version that Hubbard gave me, about him and Kit killing an entire creature mob, about – ”

“I – ” Lucy hesitates. “Yes. In Prague, the morning after the two of you fought Rittenhouse in St Vitus and he learned what happened to Christian. He – look, the two of you had just completely fallen out and there wasn’t… there wasn’t really a good time to bring that up. Nor did I know if it was my right to tell you, instead of his. I’m sorry.”

Flynn looks at her again, something odd and raw and agonized flickering in his eyes. He closes them for several moments, as if to force down something too huge to be let out of its cage and that will devour him if he gives into it right now, when he has never needed his strength more. “All right,” he says after a long pause. “We’ll…. talk about it later.”

Lucy nods, since lengthy, soul-baring conversations will strip off their armor and are a luxury they cannot presently afford, but she squeezes his hand, and he hesitates, then squeezes it back. They sit in silence for the rest of the flight, the light outside the plane windows starting to change and slip away as they fast-forward through afternoon, and by the time they dip under the clouds and touch down in Zurich, it’s dark. They were early getting into the air, as well as not having to go through customs, and it’s 9:12 PM CEST when they step into the rental car terminal, look around, and see Maria de Clermont waiting by the information desk.

Flynn and his mother lock eyes for a very long moment. It hits both of them like a lightning strike, neither of them quite believing it. Then Maria, completely heedless of her usual icy dignity, sprints across the polished floor and throws herself into her son’s arms. Flynn catches her and holds on as hard as he can, and they revolve in a stumbling circle, Maria trying to say something and barely able to get it out through her sobs, as she clutches Flynn’s head in her hands and kisses his entire face over and over. Lucy has never seen the formidable de Clermont matriarch so completely undone, and provides tactful nods and throat-clearings until Flynn and Maria finally break apart. Maria turns to her, sniffling and doing her best to pull herself together, and manages an awkward nod. “Lucy.”

“Mada – Maria.” Lucy isn’t sure how they left things, since Maria left New York in icy disapproval over their refusal to tell her who attacked Gabriel, and while she’s certainly had an emotional reunion with Flynn, things are – to say the least – complicated between the two of them. “I’m – thank you for meeting us.”

“I am glad to see you back. Very – very much so.” Maria’s voice is rusty, and she coughs, straightening her shoulders. “I have – matters have been difficult. I almost thought – no. We are here now, and we must go. We must go at once.”

Flynn nods in wordless agreement, and they stride up to the rental desk. Flynn acquires an Audi (clearly going for maximum horsepower) and they make their way out to the hire lot to find their chariot. Lucy slides into the backseat, allowing Maria to take the passenger seat next to Flynn, who swings into the driver’s seat, slides it back as far as it goes, and navigates the airport roundabouts in record time. Nobody says anything until they’re on the A53, Flynn laying tracks in the left lane and mercilessly overtaking even the usual 160-km lunatics on the autobahn. Then Maria says, “Thank God that you are safe.”

Flynn glances sidelong at his mother, starts to answer, and clearly can’t think how. At last he says, “What happened while we were gone? What’s going on? Rittenhouse – ”

“That man has…” Maria considers, then speaks with cool, pointed precision. “He has staged his return and taken over the Congregation, declared it null and void. Temple, Cahill, and Keynes have all pledged their loyalty to him. William – Wyatt – and I were there when it happened. We took a video recording, but it has proven difficult to know where to distribute it. Rufus knows more about it than I, but even when we manage to get creatures to see it, the response is not what we hoped. Nobody seems to feel that they must do anything about it, necessarily. Some of the vampires think it is more than time that we were once more rulers of the supernatural world. As if Rittenhouse is that, but they think it so.”

Maria’s voice is bitter, as she is clearly chafing unbearably at this apathy, this indifferent response when the de Clermonts are working so hard to raise awareness and warn everyone about how dangerous this monster is. She goes on, “We are in Sept-Tours now, for our own safety, but remain in close contact with the Knights of Lazarus stationed in Venice. They bring us more disturbing news than anyone could wish. There are dark rumors. Strange things are happening, people are starting to disappear. The archives have been taken over and there are whispers of a thorough review into files, into bloodlines and families, abilities and ancestors. They are in particular search of, as they say, _half-breeds_ , even as they spout empty rhetoric about the unity of all creatures. And in that department… Garcia, you have a niece.”

Flynn almost drives into the guardrail at 105 miles an hour. “I have a _what?”_

“A niece.” Maria looks at him. “Her name is Sarah, Sarah Proctor. She is six years old. She is Wyatt and Jessica’s daughter, she was born some months after their relationship ended. I had to retrieve her from Temple’s house in Venice, along with – ”

“Along with who?”

“Along with Cecilia.” Maria’s lips are white. “She was kidnapped from our Scottish estate, and held prisoner for some weeks. We managed to rescue her, but I will not forgive myself for not doing it sooner. Cecilia is the strongest of us all, we always thought. We crumbled, but she did not. So if we could not reach her at once, we arrogantly assumed it would matter less, that she could stand it. That was a mistake for which I only pray I may atone.”

This is clearly an entirely new rat’s nest, which takes Maria several minutes to explain, and she looks paler and more drained than ever by the time she’s done. Lucy doesn’t know if it’s possible for vampires, but she seems to have several more silver hairs than the last time they saw her, made almost mortal and fallible by her grief, lines etched under her beautiful eyes and the full weight of her three thousand years visible beneath the exterior of a woman forever in her early thirties. “So,” she finishes. “I do not know.”

Flynn keeps his eyes on the road, but Lucy can see a muscle working in his cheek. Silence fills the dark car, as they are burning out of the Zurich metro area and toward the mountains. Then Maria says, her voice barely a whisper, “So you saw him, did you not. Your father.”

Flynn closes his eyes briefly, which is a dangerous thing to do when operating an automobile at high speed. Lucy can see the naked pain on his face, wrestling with the squashed dream of wanting him to be home, to be _home_. He says only, “Yes.”

Maria glances at Lucy, who gives a small nod. She isn’t sure if she should say more, but Maria seems desperate to hear everything – at least, as much as they can say. So Lucy tells her about Asher, about meeting him, about how much she admired him, that he gave his blessing for their marriage and begged them to save Gabriel. She stays off the delicate subjects – Kelley, Flynn’s past self, the attack on Sept-Tours, Asher almost dying – but fills in the rest, as much as she can, as Maria gulps down every detail. When Lucy mentions Jack, Maria starts. “Jack Blackfriars? The same one? But he is here.”

“What?” Lucy and Flynn look at each other, shocked. “How?”

“He said that he was made a vampire by Father Hubbard.” Maria’s lips go thin. “And that he owed Christian a debt in the past, that Christian had taken him in. He was – well, Temple forced him to turn spy and informant on us, but he deserted him and has been most helpful. Would that make sense?”

“I. . . yes.” Flynn’s face remains drawn. “I had to agree to let Hubbard have him, when I was arrested in September. So I take it the bastard fulfilled that part of it.”

“You were arrested?” Maria looks alarmed. “For what?”

“Illegal magic,” Flynn says, “technically speaking. But mostly for Hubbard’s grudge against us. I’ll tell you the rest later.”

Maria considers that, then nods. “If Jack said that he knew Christian. . . you did see Asher, as you have just said. Then surely you saw – you saw Christian as well?”

“We…” Flynn makes a faltering noise. “Yes, we did, but _Maman,_ we – ”

“What?” Maria frowns. “Garcia, what?”

“We – ” Another twenty seconds elapse as Flynn continues to wrestle it out of his chest. “We had to bring him with – _Maman,_ he – he’s here. In New York. We had to leave him with Denise and Michelle, he didn’t – he wasn’t awake, but we… yes.”

Maria stares at him, utterly blank with shock. She cannot muster up the ghost of a response, cannot even process, clearly does not think they are even inhabiting the same reality. A good three minutes pass in solid, unbearable silence. Finally, Maria breathes, “No.”

“Yes.” Flynn clicks off the cruise control long enough to get them through a one-lane section of roadworks, then punches it again. “I don’t know what we – if we can – but still.”

“And he is…” Maria looks as if she’s going to have a heart attack. “Garcia, he’s _alive?”_

“In a manner of speaking.” Flynn glances at her, helpless. “We’ll try to keep him that way, but he – he can’t stay here. We’re going to have to take him back to 1590, or it’ll wreck our entire history. But he – if we manage – yes.”

Maria does not answer. She remains where she is, staring straight ahead, lights playing on her porcelain face in sharp streaks of color, her eyes huge and clear and stunned. She keeps shaking her head, mouth shaping around her grandson’s name, as if she cannot believe it and yet has never wanted anything so much as to do so. Then at last she leans forward, puts her head in her hands, and without a word, breaks down.

Flynn looks at her as if he would like to do the same, but he can’t do much to comfort his mother when he’s driving. Not sure how this will be received, Lucy reaches forward to timidly offer Maria her hand. At first, Maria doesn’t notice it or is too proud to acknowledge it, but then she reaches out, clasps hold, and squeezes so tightly that Lucy briefly fears her metacarpals will be crushed. Still, she doesn’t pull away, letting Maria cling to it, almost terrified at the thought that she could provide any kind of solace or support to this awesomely powerful woman-shaped immortal entity, who is over three thousand years old and has seen everything that humanity has to offer, good or bad. Lucy was born the year _Return of the Jedi_ premiered and the first Hooters restaurant opened. By comparison, she’s… small potatoes.

The road gets steeper and steeper as they head into the mountains, up the pass, and then reach a point high enough to see the distant, twinkling lights of Liechtenstein in the dramatic drop to the valley floor below. Lucy checks the clock; it’s 10:49pm. If they have twenty-four hours straight, they’re _probably_ okay, assuming no more delays. If it’s midnight to midnight, that’s a little more worrisome, and she sits up straight, noticing the red glow of taillights as cars ahead of them start braking. “Some kind of traffic jam? Border checks?”

“Switzerland doesn’t have border checks with Liechtenstein.” Flynn’s face is drawn in sharp, forbidding lines, his scowl dark. “In fact, they’ve accidentally invaded it several times. Liechtenstein was never too fussed. There’s suddenly some kind of checkpoint on the very day they could have guessed – or known – that we would be coming? I don’t like this.”

“Temple, he – ” Maria looks alarmed. “I did tell you that he was hinting about Liechtenstein, and we had Rufus watch over it with his technology? We never saw anything then, but – ”

“Maybe he was just biding his time.” Flynn stares at the lights, considers for an instant longer, then says, “I don’t like this. Hold on.”

With that, he cuts sharply out of the queue, Lucy hisses and grabs onto the seatbelt as there is suddenly a cliff right below them, and they spend several highly eventful minutes driving where it was definitely not designed for anyone to do so. They bump and roll over gravel, something that looks like a goddamn goat path, past several more steep and very sheer glacier-carved drops, and then finally, spraying trees, emerge onto a two-lane local road, away from the main A3. The dashboard GPS is having absolute conniptions and has given up on all attempts to help them (they’re lucky if it doesn’t assume they’ve been in an accident and automatically phone the police) and Flynn, looking annoyed, unplugs it and has Maria chuck it in the glovebox. They pass a road sign in a few more minutes – six kilometers to Vaduz – and Flynn says for Lucy’s benefit, “The fortress is in the mountains just outside Triesen. Just south of here, not much further. Then we hike.”

It’s clear that he’s feeling the urgency, that he’s not sure that it isn’t midnight, and it’s inching past eleven as they zoom down the mostly-empty 28. The horizon rises up into the huge, jagged shoulders of the Alps, the moon glowing on the fairly large snowfields that remain even in May, and Lucy, who has dressed for spring in New York, hopes they’re not going to be out there for too long. They climb a steep dirt road, and in a few more minutes, reach a closed access gate. Flynn gets out, and rather than fooling around with any such nonsense as trying to pick the lock, he just rips the entire full-sized steel bar off its hinges and tosses it aside like a twig. He brushes his hands off with a look of vengeful satisfaction, Lucy makes a mental note to jump him at a later date for that, and they race on.

They’re close to the highest point in the country, the formidable peak of Vorder Grauspitz, which absolutely sounds like a place where there would be a secret supernatural fortress, and at 11:32 pm, thanks to Flynn’s superlative madman driving, they turn into a tiny pullout and he kills the engine. They all open the door and jump out, Lucy shivers as the alpine night wind cuts right through her thin blouse, and Flynn beckons her over, pointing at the wall of stone that towers a few thousand feet above them. “It’s up here,” he says. “I’ll carry you. _Maman_ and I can run it in ten or fifteen minutes. Fewer, if we’re pushing it.”

Given the events to date, Lucy imagines they will in fact be pushing it, and climbs piggyback onto Flynn, wrapping her arms around his neck – at least this isn’t her first experience of riding him, after their eventful escape from Prague. He can’t go _quite_ as high-speed as he did then, but he and Maria are hauling ass faster than even the toughest and most experienced mountaineer could manage. They peel up a narrow, twisting path, the entire valley floor quickly falling away below, and nothing but brilliant stars and magnificent mountains as far as the eye can see. Flynn and Maria boulder through a spill of glacial moraine, have to use their hands in ascending a long couloir (Lucy closes her eyes and presses her face into Flynn’s shoulder blades – she’s fine with heights usually, but this angle is much more nerve-wracking), and emerge at the top on a broad, exposed ridge. A further two or three hundred meters ahead, barely visible among the other boulders, is a small tower that must guard the entrance, into the secret chambers burrowed into the stone and bone of the mountainside.

Flynn and Maria all-out run for it, reaching the tower and circling around to the door, and stopping short with horrified curses. Lucy feels her own heart skip a beat. The door has been assaulted, violated and broken open, and there is no sound from the pure and perfect blackness beyond. She feels an instinctive revulsion about going down there, the way nobody wants to jump into a hole without being able to see the bottom, but it’s clear that they are not the only visitors tonight, and if someone got here first, someone with a vested interest in seeing that Gabriel never woke up –

She doesn’t know, she doesn’t want to think about it, and it’s clear from his face that if Flynn stops for a second or allows himself to run away with possibilities, he’s going to lose his mind. He wrenches away the splintered timbers and lowers himself (and Lucy) through, jumping down and landing on the ground below like a cat. Maria leaps down after them, and grabs a torch from the rusted iron sconce on the wall. It’s burned out, but Lucy touches it, and witchfire bursts into life, reflecting eerie and spectral against the rock ribs of the passage. Flynn puts her down, clearly in case he needs his hands to fight, and the three of them advance, more than a little petrified, toward the waiting dark.

Maria sweeps the torch ahead, shadows fleeing and dancing on the walls, and as they come around the bend, stepping down into the antechamber where the Knights of Lazarus should be stationed, the light falls on several pairs of booted feet. Their owners are visible in the next instant, sprawled facefirst on the floor. They’re still Knights of Lazarus, that’s undeniable. They’re just dead. And as the light climbs the wall, it catches on another pair of stylish black boots, these one attached to jeans, leather jacket, red hair and green eyes, a mocking grin. “Evening, Flynn,” Emma Whitmore drawls, lounging against the wall and regarding them with the air of a satisfied gourmand. “About time you joined the party.”

All of them stop dead in their tracks. The last time they saw Emma in the flesh was when Flynn and Gabriel rescued Lucy from the ruined castle near Albi in the south of France, and the parallel clearly occurs to her too. “Gotta stop meeting in wrecked old fortresses, huh? Or maybe it appeals to your sense of drama? I wasn’t sure you were actually going to make it. Where’ve you been – 1590? Bit too much misogyny and dysentery for my taste.”

“You – ” Flynn stares at his old nemesis, the woman who tortured Lucy, who is clearly here tonight with the explicit intention of taking another loved one from him. His eyes are dead black, and Lucy can sense him struggling with something, some frightening change that she has never felt from him before. “You _bitch.”_

“Come on.” Emma smiles, red-lipped, white-teethed, predatory as a wolf, which makes sense considering that she’s facing off against a vampire. She pushes off the wall, sauntering forward, her heels clicking like gunshots on the stone. “Do better than that. Or maybe you can’t. You see what I’ve done to your friends here. All kinds of advantages that come to swearing yourself personally to Rittenhouse, wouldn’t you say? So many new powers. If you want to get in while the getting’s good – well. This would be the time.”

“What have you – ” Maria herself seems too stunned to react. Her eyes flash madly to the wall behind Emma, the locked door that must lead into the inner sanctum where Gabriel’s hidden, his last defense. “Have you – ”

“Mama’s boy is still in there, yes,” Emma says carelessly. “I can’t open the door. Only a Knight of Lazarus can. Took the signet rings off the dead ones and used them in the lock, but that wasn’t enough to fool it. But look, Garcia. Here you are. Guess you’ll open it for me.”

Flynn snarls, fangs bared. “And why the _fuck_ would I do that?”

“I don’t know.” Emma shrugs, sleeker than ever. “All kinds of reasons. You’ll be aware of Temple’s interest in our mutual friend, Jessica Proctor, and what exactly she’s been up to in the fifteenth century. Apparently she has a sprog, your family stole it back, and he’s _really_ not pleased about that. But I know how the de Clermonts feel about witches, at least the ones they aren’t fucking. Jessica isn’t my real offer. You – ” She glances at Maria with assumed casualness. “Don’t you want to see your husband again?”

Maria has started into an answer, but at that, she cuts off. She looks as if she’s been shot with silver, staked in the heart, or both. “You liar,” she manages at last. “You don’t have Asher.”

“David Rittenhouse has powers you couldn’t dream of.” Emma takes another step. Neither Flynn or Maria seem immediately able to react, stunned as a sparrow in a serpent’s eye. “And he’s been particularly interested on how _best_ to contrive revenge on the man who imprisoned him under Poveglia for two hundred and twenty-one years. So what? Are you going to take the chance that your precious Asher is actually alive somewhere, and just abandon him again? Fail him? Find him dead just like you did in 1944? That seems like a waste, but maybe I don’t know how vampires – ”

“Shut up.” It bursts out of Lucy like poison. She raises both hands, burning white, throwing mad shadows in the low underground chamber. “Get out of here right now.”

“Lucy.” Emma regards her with an amused expression. “I see you’ve really gotten that magic working, haven’t you? Still thanks to me, not that you appreciate it. But I’m pretty sure I can take you. So should we let them struggle with their consciences, and slug it out?”

Lucy doesn’t know, and she doesn’t care. She’s fairly sure that Emma is lying about Asher, but the fact that the subject has been raised as a serious bargaining tool means that it is indeed something that Rittenhouse is actively pursuing. After all, since she and Flynn just snatched Christian out of his timeline, what’s to stop Rittenhouse from doing that with Asher? He’s a timewalker, obviously, and he clearly has every intention of altering the past so that Asher never defeats him in 1796, so that he enjoys an uninterrupted reign over the creature world for all of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well – changes everything, destroys everyone. It is cataclysmic on a scale that nobody can begin to fathom, it is supreme evil’s ultimate victory, it’s – Flynn can’t say yes, he can’t say no, he can’t let Emma free to do that, he can’t let her in to kill Gabriel, he can’t –

Fine, Lucy thinks. If that’s what she has to do, she will. It may go very badly for her, but she doesn’t care. She pulls her hands back and unleashes an almighty fireball.

Emma is caught off guard, for a fraction of a second, and the explosion blows her off her feet, among the fallen bodies of the murdered Knights. She scrambles to her feet, teeth bared, as Lucy hits her with another broadside. Emma raises her hands to counter it, but Maria lets out an absolutely bone-chilling snarl, leaps, and tackles her like a ton of bricks.

The two women, witch and vampire, hit the deck in a blur of flailing limbs, entangled and savaging, exchanging blows of mortal and magical provenance all at once. In the few moments of distraction that this assures them, Lucy runs to Flynn and grabs his arm. “Now. NOW!”

He stares at her as if he doesn’t know who she is, and she has half a sense that he might tear her throat out if she moves too fast, but then he blinks and shakes his head wildly. He dashes to the door to the inner chamber, presses his signet ring into the lock, and there are a series of clanks and clunks as the mechanism recognizes and authorizes him as an authentic Knight of Lazarus. It opens, and Flynn seizes hold of Lucy. With half a glance back – Maria is still fighting Emma, she can’t be distracted, and this is their only chance – and an anguished expression, he dives through and slams it behind them.

Lucy’s breath got left behind in the outer chamber, and her head is reeling madly. All sound has been cut off; they can’t hear anything from the battle royale, and they are engulfed in an utter, disorienting silence as thick as seafoam. The ceiling is somewhat higher, though the walls are closer, and the room only contains one thing. There’s a bier, a glass coffin, and inside this – very much like a princess in a fairytale, Lucy thinks with unhinged humor – Gabriel de Clermont, the real Gabriel, is lying in an enchanted sleep.

It’s clear that the deadline is almost up. The blackness of the manticore venom coils through his neck and shoulder, and his face is pale as bone china, his closed eyes sunken in their sockets until his face resembles a skull. Flynn utters an awful, choked noise and looks set to smash through the glass directly, but Lucy catches his hand, holding it tight. She made the bargain with the Goddess; this is witch magic, it has to let her through. With her other hand, she reaches out, and the glass melts like a cloud.

“Stone,” Flynn says. _“Stone.”_

Lucy is ahead of him. She snatches a goblet from a stone grotto nearby, does the spell that Agnes did to fill it with wine, and drops in the philosopher’s stone, swirling it around until it fully dissolves. The wine takes on a golden glow, pure and clear, the proper and permanent Elixir of Life, and she is gripped by a conviction that they have only seconds left. Flynn lifts Gabriel in his arms, pulling his mouth open, and Lucy raises the cup to it. With that – she doesn’t know if this will work, but it is the only chance – she tips in the Elixir, and prays.

For several absolutely terrible moments, nothing happens. Some of the liquid spills down Gabriel’s chin, and Flynn makes another terrible noise, cupping Gabriel’s face in his hands, as if silently and monumentally pleading with him to wake up, that he will do anything, go anywhere, fight any monster living or dead if it would just make him open his eyes. Then something changes, ever so slightly, and Lucy frantically pours in more. Gabriel’s throat moves faintly, swallowing, once and then again. She tips the goblet up as far as it goes, using every single drop and then some, until it’s empty. It falls from her hand with a clatter.

Still, an instant longer, nothing. Flynn holds on with his entire soul, wrapped up, devouring. Then the ethereal glow centers in Gabriel’s chest and begins to spread, veining him with cracks of gold like kintsugi, spreading up and soothing away the damage, the darkness, the charred black of the manticore venom. It replaces it with pure and healed flesh, a permanent cure that is not going to be revoked or expired. The Elixir has done its job, and while Gabriel would have to drink it continuously if he wanted to stay immortal, that at least (one hopes) will not be a concern again. Lucy and Flynn watch in utter, transfixed silence, as the glow laps to every inch of Gabriel’s body, repairing the broken pieces it finds, and then begins to fade. His eyelashes flutter, he utters a racking cough, he jerks once and then again like a drowning victim spitting out seawater, and then all at once, he wakes up.

The first thing he sees – clearly the _only_ thing he sees – is Flynn’s pale and frantic face, his arms around him, clutching as if he (and in some ways, he did) just dragged Gabriel out of hell with his bare hands. Gabriel clearly isn’t sure if he’s still dreaming, if he’s died, or if this can possibly be happening, and his own hand floats up to touch Flynn’s chin. “You – ” he husks, voice rough and rasping and barely functional with disuse and disbelief. “Darling, you can’t be – ?”

Flynn holds it together for about point-two more seconds, and then – since this must be the first time that Gabriel has called him _darling_ since Christian died – he does not. He tries to speak, utters a mad, strangled noise instead, and then falls onto the bier next to Gabriel. They clutch hold of each other, they keep trying to say something but can’t, Flynn kisses him about half a thousand times, and Gabriel looks as if that answers that question, he’s definitely dead and/or having some kind of fever dream. “Garcia,” he whispers. “Garcia, my dearest, what exactly – ?”

“Never mind. Never mind.” Flynn sits up slowly, pulling Gabriel with him, as Gabriel grips his wrists as if they are the only steady thing in all of reality. “You’re – Jesus, I don’t – Gabriel, _moje srce._ Jesus. Jesus. It’s you, it’s really you, I can’t – ”

Gabriel’s white lips turn up in a soft, dreaming smile; he clearly doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, but he has given up fighting it. He still has not taken his eyes off Garcia, the pair of them completely lost in their own little world, and he looks as if he would happily die again. At last, after several moments, he turns his head and belatedly becomes aware of Lucy. He lets go of Flynn with evident reluctance and pivots to face her. “My lady.”

“Hello,” Lucy says awkwardly. She has no idea how to react to him or what to say or what to do, and he just as obviously does not either. They do some quality staring of their own, until she says, “Ah, I’m – I’m glad you’re back.”

Gabriel utters a bone-dry breath of a laugh. “And I am glad to be so, I think. What has – what has gone on?” He looks around at their subterranean surroundings, frowning. “Where are we? I thought we were in New York.”

“We have – a lot to catch you up on,” Lucy says shakily. “In fact, we should check if – ”

 _“Maman.”_ Finally remembering to think about somebody other than Gabriel for the first time in twenty-four hours, Flynn blanches. He rolls off the bier and sprints to the door, then hesitates. They obviously can’t run the risk of letting Emma barge in here, they can’t hear anything from beyond, don’t know what’s happened. But Flynn sets his feet, as Lucy steps in front of Gabriel and prepares to defend them both with her magic, and opens the door.

A cold wind blows in, from further up the passage. The bodies of the dead Knights lie where they have fallen, but there’s nobody else there. Maria’s torch has been dropped on the floor, burned out. She and Emma themselves are gone, there’s no way to tell if one of them grabbed the other and fled, or if something else altogether has happened, and Flynn stares at it, then runs out. _“Maman?”_ His voice echoes wildly. _“Maman!”_

“My mother is – ?” Gabriel looks up at Lucy, confused and alarmed. “How long have I – ?”

Lucy really wants to take it slowly with all the earth-shaking pieces of news they have to heap on him, especially since he still looks as if one good shock could finish him off. The Elixir has healed him and they don’t have to worry about it wearing off, but he’s still very weak, hasn’t fed since last year, and been in a magical coma that took him to the very doorstep of death and then some. “Six months.”

“Six _mon –_ ” Gabriel looks thunderstruck. “Christ. Are we in – ” He glances around again, judging the layout, the room, the stone. _“Liechtenstein?”_

“Yes. We have – you remember how you said that it felt like you met me before?”

“I…” Gabriel frowns. “Yes. I said that to you in Sept-Tours, before you and Garcia left for your godmothers’ house. What of it?”

Lucy isn’t sure if she should just slap all his memories back on him like this, even if it would certainly be the quickest way to explain the most of the story. But he’s hungry and weak, and she sits down next to him and holds out her wrist. She knows that this isn’t his past self, but she doesn’t feel quite safe offering up her neck. “Here.”

“My lady, I – ” Gabriel looks at her. “I could not, I – ”

“Go on,” Lucy repeats. “It’ll help.”

He looks at her face, as if trying to work out what exactly is changed between them, for better or worse, then takes her wrist delicately in his hands, lifts it to his mouth, and bites into the soft skin of the underside. He sucks for a few moments, some more color retuning to his ashen cheeks and his eyes losing their manic stare, and Lucy nods him to take a final drink when he glances questioningly at her. Then he pulls back, retracts his fangs, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why do I have the feeling,” he says, frown deepening, “that we have had some acquaintance in these six months, even if I was asleep here? And that this acquaintance was – not one you cared much for?”

“It’s – complicated.” Lucy hesitates. “Do you really want to know right now?”

Gabriel glances at her, something raw and vulnerable in his eyes, but at that moment, they are interrupted by the return of Flynn. He looks slightly shell-shocked. _“Maman’s_ gone.”

“Emma can fly,” Lucy says, having vivid memories of being swooped off from the woods of Sept-Tours. “Maybe she snatched her and – ”

“I don’t…” Flynn starts, then stops. “No. _Maman_ was startled, but she – there’s no way Emma could overpower her, not – ”

Lucy’s about to point out that Emma killed at least five Knights of Lazarus, powerful and formidable vampire soldiers, and that Maria, fearsome as she is, could still have been off her guard. But as she and Flynn look at each other, she can tell that they’re both wondering the same thing – that Maria, if she did go, was not removed entirely against her will. That she decided to take a mad risk, the one and only thing that could ever make her leave on the brink of seeing her beloved eldest son again, saving his life after months of loss and fear and uncertainty. Either she was driven by guilt for failing Cecilia, let Emma take her in hopes of getting to grips with Temple, to revenge herself more fully, or she thought, however madly, that there was some chance of actually seeing Asher again. That she could reach him. That somewhere, some _when,_ in this timeline or a nearby one, he’s alive.

“Garcia.” Gabriel gets to his feet, looking worried, and goes over to him. “Are you – ”

“I don’t know.” Flynn reaches out a hand, touches Gabriel’s cheek, as their foreheads rest together and they stand like that, swaying. “Gabriel, there’s – there’s something I have to tell you, and I don’t know how you’re going to – ”

“In a moment, darling. In a moment.” Gabriel kisses his nose and then turns to Lucy. “What were you just saying? About what I needed to know? Whatever it is you both have to say to me, I think it is best that I know that first.”

“Gabriel,” Flynn starts. “I don’t know if you’re going to – ”

“No,” Gabriel says decisively. “I have spent long enough avoiding the truth. It is more than time that I faced up to it, no matter what. Lucy – ” he nods to her. “Whatever it was you needed to do, I would like you to do it.”

Lucy hesitates, her eyes flickering to Flynn’s. But it’s true that they can’t deny Gabriel the right to know what he himself did, that telling him that Christian is here in 2018 will make somewhat more sense with the full story, and that this was never going to be easy, no matter when it happened. She raises her hands to Gabriel’s head, closes her eyes, and sinks into it with her magic, descending until she finds the dusty relics of her own spell, the magical amnesia that she cast on him over four hundred years ago. With a tug, and then another, being careful only to loose these threads, she pulls it free, and crumples it away.

Gabriel jerks. His brows knit, and he frowns, locked in deep concentration and confusion, as all the memories of 1590 pour back in in a flood. Then, slowly, the frown is replaced with a look of complete and utter horror. His eyes flash open, and he stumbles backward from both of them, shaking his head. “No, no, no. Oh no. Oh _no.”_

“You…” Lucy bites her lip. She doesn’t want to tell him that it wasn’t that bad, because it was, but at least they got to the other side. “I said it was complicated, but you – ”

Gabriel stares at them as if the last thing he can do right now is stand there in front of them when they all know this, when _he_ knows this, when all the curtains have fallen and all the pretenses are vanished, it is only them in a fortress in Liechtenstein in the howling night, the dead men at the door, their mother gone, an impossible realization, an utter, staggering immensity. “I will – ” he says. “Please. Give me a – yes. I’ll just – I’ll – I’m sorry.”

With that, he whirls around and bolts down the passage, as Flynn shouts and runs after him. Lucy can’t keep up with their speed, but she does her best, feet slipping on the dark stones, as she falls painfully and skins her hands and knees. She climbs back up, staggers onward, reaches the broken door, and climbs out into the mountain night, as the wind hits her in the face and almost knocks her backward into thin air. In it, for just a moment, she can hear the Goddess’s whisper. _Anything I asked for. That you promised me, Lucy Preston. The price will still be paid, will it not?_

Lucy can’t stop to pay attention to that, as she struggles out and turns her head, staring across the mountainside. She can’t see either of them, and she shouts desperately, even as the wind steals her voice. “Garcia? Garcia! Gabriel? _Gabriel!_ GARCIA!”

She isn’t sure if she can climb back down to the car by herself, and she doesn’t want to blunder around and get herself well and thoroughly lost on a deserted mountaintop in the Alps. She is fighting off panic by the time she spots a tall figure on the far side of the ridge, is seized by a terrible conviction that it’s Temple coming to see how Emma’s assault on the fortress went, and then, as it comes closer, recognizes that – thank God – it’s Flynn. As they draw close enough to speak, he says, “Gabriel – I couldn’t catch him. He just – he just _ran_. I didn’t even see where.”

Lucy doesn’t know what to say to that. She supposes that this is a deeply understandable reaction, all things considered, but there’s the outstanding fact that Gabriel still doesn’t know about Christian, and should not be out here by himself just minutes after being revived from living death. She looks up at Flynn’s stunned face, the shadows among the stars, the hungry dark. “We’ll go back to the car,” she says. “We’ll drive for the rest of the night if we have to. We’ll find him, and we’ll take both of you home to your son. You’re not going to lose him again. _Or_ your mother. I swear, Garcia. I swear.”

Flynn looks as if he might fling himself off a cliff first, but manages to nod. He reaches for her hand, half to make sure they aren’t separated again and half as if to hold himself up. They stand there a moment more, in the night and wild, and the wind that smells of war. Then, one foot after another, to the edge, into heaven or into hell, they go on down.

 

**_To be continued…_ **

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [we couldn't bring the columns down](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20407120) by [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings)




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